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RMR-efficient implementations of comparison primitives using read and write operations

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Abstract

We consider asynchronous multiprocessors where processes communicate only by reading or writing shared memory. We show how to implement consensus, compare-and-swap and other comparison primitives, as well as load-linked/store-conditional (LL/SC) using only a constant number of remote memory references (RMRs), in both the cache-coherent and the distributed-shared-memory models of such multiprocessors. Our implementations are blocking, rather than wait-free: they ensure progress provided all processes that invoke the implemented primitive are live. Our results imply that any algorithm using read and write operations, and either comparison primitives or LL/SC, can be simulated by an algorithm that uses read and write operations only, with at most a constant-factor increase in RMR complexity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. HP Labs, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Wojciech Golab

  2. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Vassos Hadzilacos

  3. Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel

    Danny Hendler

  4. University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Philipp Woelfel

Authors
  1. Wojciech Golab
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  2. Vassos Hadzilacos
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  3. Danny Hendler
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  4. Philipp Woelfel
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Correspondence to Wojciech Golab.

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Golab, W., Hadzilacos, V., Hendler, D. et al. RMR-efficient implementations of comparison primitives using read and write operations. Distrib. Comput. 25, 109–162 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00446-011-0150-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00446-011-0150-8

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