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A Methodology for Implementing Highly Concurrent Data Objects (1993)
| Citations: | 350 - 10 self |
BibTeX
@MISC{Herlihy93amethodology,
author = {Maurice Herlihy},
title = {A Methodology for Implementing Highly Concurrent Data Objects},
year = {1993}
}
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Abstract
A concurrent object is a data structure shared by concurrent processes. Conventional techniques for implementing concurrent objects typically rely on critical sections: ensuring that only one process at a time can operate on the object. Nevertheless, critical sections are poorly suited for asynchronous systems: if one process is halted or delayed in a critical section, other, nonfaulty processes will be unable to progress. By contrast, a concurrent object implementation is lock free if it always guarantees that some process will complete an operation in a finite number of steps, and it is wait free if it guarantees that each process will complete an operation in a finite number of steps. This paper proposes a new methodology for constructing lock-free and wait-free implementations of concurrent objects. The object’s representation and operations are written as stylized sequential programs, with no explicit synchronization. Each sequential operation is automatically transformed into a lock-free or wait-free operation using novel synchronization and memory management algorithms. These algorithms are presented for a multiple instruction/multiple data (MIMD) architecture in which n processes communicate by applying atomic read, wrzte, load_linked, and store_conditional operations to a shared memory.
Keyphrases
critical section concurrent object implementing highly concurrent data object finite number concurrent process conventional technique explicit synchronization store_conditional operation multiple instruction multiple data asynchronous system data structure nonfaulty process new methodology atomic read memory management algorithm wait-free operation stylized sequential program sequential operation novel synchronization wait-free implementation object representation concurrent object implementation
