Synonyms
Definition
In the context of shared-memory systems, the memory model specifies the values that a shared-memory read in a program may return. It is part of the interface between a shared-memory program and any hardware or software that may transform that program – it both specifies the possible behaviors of the memory accesses for the programmer and constrains the legal transformations and executions for the implementer.
For high-level language programs, the memory model describes the behavior of accesses to shared variables or heap objects, while for machine code, the memory model describes the behavior of hardware instructions that access shared memory. Without an unambiguous memory model, it is not possible to reason about the correctness of a shared-memory program, compiler, dynamic optimizer, or hardware.
Discussion
Sequential Consistency
In a single-threaded program, a read is expected to return the value of the last...
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Adve, S.V., Boehm, H.J. (2011). Memory Models. In: Padua, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09766-4_419
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