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Consistency for Transactional Memory Computing

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Transactional Memory. Foundations, Algorithms, Tools, and Applications

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8913))

Abstract

This chapter provides formal definitions for a comprehensive collection of consistency conditions for transactional memory (TM) computing. We express all conditions in a uniform way using a formal framework that we present. For each of the conditions, we provide two versions: one that allows a transaction T to read the value of a data item written by another transaction T′ that can be live and not yet commit-pending provided that T′ will eventually commit, and a version which allows transactions to read values written only by transactions that have either committed before T starts or are commit-pending. Deriving the first version for a consistency condition was not an easy task but it has the benefit that this version is weaker than the second one and so it results in a wider universe of algorithms which there is no reason to exclude from being considered correct. The formalism for the presented consistency conditions is not based on any unrealistic assumptions, such as that transactional operations are executed atomically or that write operations write distinct values for data items. Making such assumptions facilitates the task of formally expressing the consistency conditions significantly, but results in formal presentations of them that are unrealistic, i.e. that cannot be used to characterize the correctness of most of the executions produced by any reasonable TM algorithm.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. FORTH ICS & University of Crete, Heraklion (Crete), Greece

    Panagiota Fatourou

  2. FORTH ICS, Heraklion (Crete), Greece

    Dmytro Dziuma & Eleni Kanellou

  3. University of Rennes 1, Rennes, France

    Eleni Kanellou

Authors
  1. Dmytro Dziuma
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  2. Panagiota Fatourou
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  3. Eleni Kanellou
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. EPFL, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Rachid Guerraoui

  2. Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa/INESC-ID, 1000-029, Lisboa, Portugal

    Paolo Romano

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Dziuma, D., Fatourou, P., Kanellou, E. (2015). Consistency for Transactional Memory Computing. In: Guerraoui, R., Romano, P. (eds) Transactional Memory. Foundations, Algorithms, Tools, and Applications. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8913. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14720-8_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14720-8_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-14719-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-14720-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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