Abstract
In this paper, we define k-abortable objects, the first kind of abortable objects [2, 7] that guarantee some degree of progress even under high contention. The definition is simple and natural: intuitively, an operation on a k-abortable object can abort only if k operations from distinct processes succeed during the execution of the aborted operation. We first show that k-abortable objects can easily implement k -lock-free objects, i.e., objects where at least k processes make progress [5], but in contrast to k-lock-free objects, k-abortable objects always return control. We then give an efficient universal construction for wait-free k-abortable objects shared by n processes that takes only O(k) steps per operation. We also give a \(\varOmega (\log k)\)-steps lower bound for universal constructions of k-abortable objects shared by \(n \ge k\) processes. Since every wait-free k-abortable object can implement its k-lock-free counterpart, our universal construction also provides a universal construction for k-lock-free objects.
N. Ben-David—Part of this work was done while the author was at the University of Toronto.
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Notes
- 1.
This is akin to entering a bakery and getting stuck inside forever, because other customers keep cutting in line.
- 2.
This is akin to entering a bakery and being notified that it is currently too busy; the customer is now free to do other errands and come back later, when the bakery may be less busy, or to go to another bakery.
- 3.
So \(\textit{op}\) cannot abort just because it is concurrent with k operations of a fast process.
- 4.
So they cannot cause operations that start after \(\textit{op}\) to abort.
- 5.
In general, k-abortable objects require strong primitives because they can implement their lock-free counterparts.
- 6.
This was originally called the deterministic abortable counterpart of a type T in [7].
- 7.
This is not obvious, but it is possible to construct such runs of the adaptive algorithm in [1].
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Ben-David, N., Chan, D.Y.C., Hadzilacos, V., Toueg, S. (2016). k-Abortable Objects: Progress Under High Contention. In: Gavoille, C., Ilcinkas, D. (eds) Distributed Computing. DISC 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9888. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53426-7_22
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