A Lightweight Implementation of Obstruction-Free Software Transactional Memory
01 Jan 2015-pp 67-84
TL;DR: A simple, lightweight, and yet efficient implementation of OFTM that uses simple data structure and does not require any contention manager toward ensuring progress condition, atomicity, and serializability of transactions besides maintaining data consistency is proposed.
Abstract: Software transactional memory (STM) has evolved as an alternative for traditional lock-based process synchronization. It promises greater degree of concurrency and faster execution. This paper proposes a simple, lightweight, and yet efficient implementation of OFTM. The major contribution of the paper is in proposing a new STM algorithm that uses simple data structure. This does not require any contention manager toward ensuring progress condition, atomicity, and serializability of transactions besides maintaining data consistency. Experimental simulation on random data set establishes the merit of the proposed solution.
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05 Jul 2016
11 citations
TL;DR: Experimental results show Slider can correctly avoid multiple types of deadlocks in an online, active, efficient and scalable way.
Abstract: Existing dynamic deadlock avoidance techniques have four main drawbacks: limited capability, offline avoidance algorithm, passive avoidance strategy and poor usability. To solve these problems, we propose a user-friendly, online and active avoidance technique, called Slider, to avoid multiple types of deadlocks. The key idea of Slider is that deadlocks will not happen if critical sections are executed serially. Slider interferes in thread scheduling to ensure that at any time only one thread is in the critical state. We design Slider to avoid all deadlocks except self-deadlocks caused by mutexes or rwlocks in pthread interface. We implement Slider as a pre-loadable library so that it can be applied directly to existing applications. We do four experiments to evaluate avoidance capability, performance overhead and scalability of Slider, comparing with three state-of-the-art avoidance techniques. Experimental results show Slider can correctly avoid multiple types of deadlocks in an online, active, efficient and scalable way.
2 citations
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: In this chapter, this chapter has focused on hardware transactional memories and the work done on them so far.
Abstract: The initiation to have a concept of shared memory in processors has built an opportunity for thread level parallelism. In various applications, synchronization or ordering tools are utilized to have an access to shared data. Traditionally, multithreaded programming models usually suggest a set of low-level primitives, such as locks, to guarantee mutual exclusion. Possession of one or more locks protects access to shared data. But, due to some flaws they become a suboptimal solution. The idea of transactional memory is in research presently as an alternative to locks. Among which, one way is hardware transactional memory. Atomicity is well supported by using transactions in hardware. In this chapter, we have focused on hardware transactional memories and the work done on them so far.
1 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 1968
TL;DR: The arrangement of this invention provides a strong vibration free hold-down mechanism while avoiding a large pressure drop to the flow of coolant fluid.
Abstract: A fuel pin hold-down and spacing apparatus for use in nuclear reactors is disclosed. Fuel pins forming a hexagonal array are spaced apart from each other and held-down at their lower end, securely attached at two places along their length to one of a plurality of vertically disposed parallel plates arranged in horizontally spaced rows. These plates are in turn spaced apart from each other and held together by a combination of spacing and fastening means. The arrangement of this invention provides a strong vibration free hold-down mechanism while avoiding a large pressure drop to the flow of coolant fluid. This apparatus is particularly useful in connection with liquid cooled reactors such as liquid metal cooled fast breeder reactors.
17,939 citations
01 May 1993
TL;DR: Simulation results show that transactional memory matches or outperforms the best known locking techniques for simple benchmarks, even in the absence of priority inversion, convoying, and deadlock.
Abstract: A shared data structure is lock-free if its operations do not require mutual exclusion. If one process is interrupted in the middle of an operation, other processes will not be prevented from operating on that object. In highly concurrent systems, lock-free data structures avoid common problems associated with conventional locking techniques, including priority inversion, convoying, and difficulty of avoiding deadlock. This paper introduces transactional memory, a new multiprocessor architecture intended to make lock-free synchronization as efficient (and easy to use) as conventional techniques based on mutual exclusion. Transactional memory allows programmers to define customized read-modify-write operations that apply to multiple, independently-chosen words of memory. It is implemented by straightforward extensions to any multiprocessor cache-coherence protocol. Simulation results show that transactional memory matches or outperforms the best known locking techniques for simple benchmarks, even in the absence of priority inversion, convoying, and deadlock.
2,406 citations
TL;DR: A hierarchy of objects is derived such that no object at one level has a wait-free implementation in terms of objects at lower levels, and it is shown that atomic read/write registers, which have been the focus of much recent attention, are at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Abstract: A wait-free implementation of a concurrent data object is one that guarantees that any process can complete any operation in a finite number of steps, regardless of the execution speeds of the other processes. The problem of constructing a wait-free implementation of one data object from another lies at the heart of much recent work in concurrent algorithms, concurrent data structures, and multiprocessor architectures. First, we introduce a simple and general technique, based on reduction to a concensus protocol, for proving statements of the form, “there is no wait-free implementation of X by Y.” We derive a hierarchy of objects such that no object at one level has a wait-free implementation in terms of objects at lower levels. In particular, we show that atomic read/write registers, which have been the focus of much recent attention, are at the bottom of the hierarchy: thay cannot be used to construct wait-free implementations of many simple and familiar data types. Moreover, classical synchronization primitives such astest&set and fetch&add, while more powerful than read and write, are also computationally weak, as are the standard message-passing primitives. Second, nevertheless, we show that there do exist simple universal objects from which one can construct a wait-free implementation of any sequential object.
2,013 citations
20 Aug 1995
TL;DR: STM is used to provide a general highly concurrent method for translating sequential object implementations to non-blocking ones based on implementing a k-word compare&swap STM-transaction, a novel software method for supporting flexible transactional programming of synchronization operations.
Abstract: As we learn from the literature, flexibility in choosing synchronization operations greatly simplifies the task of designing highly concurrent programs. Unfortunately, existing hardware is inflexible and is at best on the level of a Load–Linked/Store–Conditional operation on a single word. Building on the hardware based transactional synchronization methodology of Herlihy and Moss, we offer software transactional memory (STM), a novel software method for supporting flexible transactional programming of synchronization operations. STM is non-blocking, and can be implemented on existing machines using only a Load–Linked/Store–Conditional operation. We use STM to provide a general highly concurrent method for translating sequential object implementations to non-blocking ones based on implementing a k-word compare&swap STM-transaction. Empirical evidence collected on simulated multiprocessor architectures shows that our method always outperforms the non-blocking translation methods in the style of Barnes, and outperforms Herlihy’s translation method for sufficiently large numbers of processors. The key to the efficiency of our software-transactional approach is that unlike Barnes style methods, it is not based on a costly “recursive helping” policy.
1,369 citations
13 Jul 2003
TL;DR: A new form of software transactional memory designed to support dynamic-sized data structures, and a novel non-blocking implementation of this STM that uses modular contention managers to ensure progress in practice.
Abstract: We propose a new form of software transactional memory (STM) designed to support dynamic-sized data structures, and we describe a novel non-blocking implementation. The non-blocking property we consider is obstruction-freedom. Obstruction-freedom is weaker than lock-freedom; as a result, it admits substantially simpler and more efficient implementations. A novel feature of our obstruction-free STM implementation is its use of modular contention managers to ensure progress in practice. We illustrate the utility of our dynamic STM with a straightforward implementation of an obstruction-free red-black tree, thereby demonstrating a sophisticated non-blocking dynamic data structure that would be difficult to implement by other means. We also present the results of simple preliminary performance experiments that demonstrate that an "early release" feature of our STM is useful for reducing contention, and that our STM lends itself to the effective use of modular contention managers.
1,068 citations