Abstract
Software Transactional Memory (STM) is a generic synchronization construct that enables automatic conversion of correct sequential objects into correct nonblocking concurrent objects. Recent STM systems, though significantly more practical than their predecessors, display inconsistent performance: differing design decisions cause different systems to perform best in different circumstances, often by dramatic margins. In this paper we consider four dimensions of the STM design space: (i) when concurrent objects are acquired by transactions for modification; (ii) how they are acquired; (iii) what they look like when not acquired; and (iv) the non-blocking semantics for transactions (lock-freedom vs. obstruction-freedom). In this 4-dimensional space we highlight the locations of two leading STM systems: the DSTM of Herlihy et al. and the OSTM of Fraser and Harris. Drawing motivation from the performance of a series of application benchmarks, we then present a new Adaptive STM (ASTM) system that adjusts to the offered workload, allowing it to match the performance of the best known existing system on every tested workload.
This work was supported in part by NSF grant numbers EIA-0080124, CCR-9988361, and CCR-0204344, by DARPA/AFRL contract number F29601-00-K-0182, and by financial and equipment grants from Sun Microsystems Laboratories.
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Marathe, V.J., Scherer, W.N., Scott, M.L. (2005). Adaptive Software Transactional Memory. In: Fraigniaud, P. (eds) Distributed Computing. DISC 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3724. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11561927_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11561927_26
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