University of Cambridge > Talks.cam > Semantics Lunch (Computer Laboratory) > Coarse-grained transactions

Coarse-grained transactions

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Sam Staton.

Traditional transactional memory systems suffer from overly conservative conflict detection, yielding so-called false conflicts, because they are based on fine-grained, low-level read/write conflicts. In response, the recent trend has been toward integrating various abstract data-type libraries using ad-hoc methods of high-level conflict detection. These proposals have led to improved performance but a lack of a unified theory has led to confusion in the literature.

We clarify these recent proposals by defining a generalization of transactional memory in which a transaction consists of abstract data-type operations rather than simply memory read/write operations. We provide semantics for both pessimistic (e.g. transactional boosting) and optimistic (e.g. traditional TMs and recent alternatives) execution. We show that both are included in the standard atomic semantics, yet find that the choice imposes different requirements on the coarse-grained operations: pessimistic requires operations be left-movers, optimistic requires right-movers. Finally, we discuss how the semantics applies to numerous TM implementation details discussed widely in the literature.

This talk is part of the Semantics Lunch (Computer Laboratory) series.

Tell a friend about this talk:

This talk is included in these lists:

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.

 

© 2006-2024 Talks.cam, University of Cambridge. Contact Us | Help and Documentation | Privacy and Publicity