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Weak atomicity: A helpful notion in the construction of atomic shared variables

  • Software Specification, Verification And Validation
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Abstract

A new class of 1-writer shared variables, calledweakly atomic variables, is defined, and an elegant general method of constructing atomic variables from weakly atomic ones is presented in this paper. Four examples of atomic variable constructions that use this method are described. Two of these constructions are new.

Weak atomicity provides an intermediate step between regularity and atomicity. In addition to enabling new constructions, this concept helps to derive simple correctness proofs of the constructions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, A1C 5S7, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada

    K Vidyasankar

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  1. K Vidyasankar
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Additional information

Sibsankar Haldar’s comments on the earlier versions of this paper and the reports of two anonymous referees helped to improve the presentation considerably.

This research is partially supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Individual Operating Grant A-3182. Part of this manuscript was prepared when the author was visiting Utrecht University, The Netherlands, with support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) under contract NF 62-376 (NFI project ALADDIN:Algorithmic Aspects of Parallel and Distributed Systems).

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Vidyasankar, K. Weak atomicity: A helpful notion in the construction of atomic shared variables. Sadhana 21, 245–259 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02745522

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02745522

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