Skip to main content

How to construct an atomic variable (extended abstract)

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Distributed Algorithms (WDAG 1989)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 392))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

We present solutions to the problem of simulating an atomic single-reader, single-writer variable with non-atomic bits. The first construction, for the case of a 2-valued atomic variable (bit), achieves the minimal number of non-atomic bits needed. The main construction of a multi-bit variable avoids repeated writing (resp. reading) of the value in a single write (resp. read) action on the simulated atomic variable. It improves on existing solutions of that type in simplicity and in the number of non-atomic bits used, both in presence and in accesses per read/write action.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. B. Bloom, Constructing Two-writer Atomic Registers, IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 37, pp. 1506–1514, 1988.

    Google Scholar 

  2. L. Lamport, On Interprocess Communication Parts I and II, Distributed Computing, vol.1, 1986, pp. 77–101

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. L.M. Kirousis, E. Kranakis, P.M.B. Vitányi, Atomic Multireader Register, Proc. 2nd International Workshop on Distributed Computing, Amsterdam, July 1987.

    Google Scholar 

  4. M. Li, J. Tromp, P.M.B. Vitányi, How to Share Concurrent Wait-Free Variables, (to appear)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Baruch Awerbuch, Lefteris M. Kirousis, Evangelos Kranakis, Paul M.B. Vitányi, On Proving Register Atomicity, 1980.

    Google Scholar 

  6. G.L. Peterson and J.E. Burns, Concurrent reading while writing II: the multiwriter case, Proc. 28th IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, pp. 383–392, 1987.

    Google Scholar 

  7. G.L. Peterson, Concurrent reading while writing, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, vol.5, No.1, 1983, pp. 46–55

    Google Scholar 

  8. J.E. Burns, G.L. Peterson, Sharp Bounds for Concurrent Reading While Writing, Technical Report, Georgia Institute of Technology GIT-ICS-87/31

    Google Scholar 

  9. R. Schaffer, On the correctness of atomic multi-writer registers, Technical Report MIT/LCS/TM-364, MIT lab. for Computer Science, June 1988.

    Google Scholar 

  10. P.M.B. Vitányi, B. Awerbuch, Atomic Shared Register Access by Asynchronous Hardware, Proc. 27th IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, pp. 233–243, 1986. (Errata, Ibid.,1987)

    Google Scholar 

  11. J. Tromp, How to Construct an Atomic Variable, (to appear).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Jean-Claude Bermond Michel Raynal

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1989 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Tromp, J. (1989). How to construct an atomic variable (extended abstract). In: Bermond, JC., Raynal, M. (eds) Distributed Algorithms. WDAG 1989. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 392. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-51687-5_51

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-51687-5_51

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-51687-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46750-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics