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Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing pp 2079–2086Cite as

Transactional Memories

  • Reference work entry

  • 318 Accesses

Synonyms

Locks; Monitors; Multiprocessor synchronization

Introduction

Transactional memory (TM) is an approach to structuring concurrent programs that seeks to provide better scalability and ease-of-use than conventional approaches based on locks and conditions. The term is commonly used to refer to ideas that range from programming language constructs to hardware architecture. This entry will survey how transactional memory affects each of these domains.

The major chip manufacturers have, for the time being, given up trying to make processors run faster. Moore’s law has not been repealed: Each year, more and more transistors fit into the same space, but their clock speed cannot be increased without overheating. Instead, attention has turned toward chip multiprocessing(CMP), in which multiple computing cores are included on each processor chip. In the medium term, advances in technology will provide increased parallelism, but not increased single-thread performance. As a result,...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, Brown University, Box 1910, 02912, Providence, RI, USA

    Maurice Herlihy (Professor)

Authors
  1. Maurice Herlihy
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    David Padua

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Herlihy, M. (2011). Transactional Memories. In: Padua, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09766-4_122

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