research-article

NZTM: nonblocking zero-indirection transactional memory

Authors:

James R. Goodman,

Cong WangAuthors Info & Claims

SPAA '09: Proceedings of the twenty-first annual symposium on Parallelism in algorithms and architectures

Pages 204 - 213

https://doi.org/10.1145/1583991.1584048

Published: 11 August 2009 Publication History

Abstract

This paper introduces NZTM, a nonblocking, zero-indirection, object-based, hybrid transactional memory system. NZTM comprises a nonblocking software transactional memory (STM) system that can exploit best-effort hardware transactional memory (HTM) if available to improve performance.

Most previous nonblocking software transactional memory implementations pay a significant performance cost in the common case, as compared to simpler, blocking ones. However, blocking is problematic in some cases and unacceptable in others. NZTM is nonblocking, but shares the advantages of recent blocking STM proposals in the common case: it stores object data "in place", avoiding the costly levels of indirection of previous nonblocking STMs, and improves cache performance by collocating object metadata with the data it controls.

We also explain how our nonblocking NZSTM algorithm can be substantially simplified using very simple hardware transactions, and evaluate its performance on Sun's forthcoming Rock processor. Our results show that nonblocking support introduces little overhead when compared with blocking STMs, and that NZTM is competitive with LogTM-SE, an unbounded HTM.

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Cited By

Cai WWen HScott MDehnavi MKulkarni MKrishnamoorthy S(2023)Transactional Composition of Nonblocking Data StructuresProceedings of the 28th ACM SIGPLAN Annual Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming10.1145/3572848.3577503(441-443)Online publication date: 25-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3572848.3577503
Li ZFeng X(2023)A program logic for obstruction-freedomFrontiers of Computer Science10.1007/s11704-023-2774-918:6Online publication date: 28-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-023-2774-9
Beadle HCai WWen HScott M(2020)Nonblocking Persistent Software Transactional Memory2020 IEEE 27th International Conference on High Performance Computing, Data, and Analytics (HiPC)10.1109/HiPC50609.2020.00042(283-293)Online publication date: Dec-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/HiPC50609.2020.00042
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Index Terms

NZTM: nonblocking zero-indirection transactional memory
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Concurrent computing methodologies
    1. Concurrent programming languages
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language types
        Concurrent programming languages

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cover image ACM Conferences

SPAA '09: Proceedings of the twenty-first annual symposium on Parallelism in algorithms and architectures

August 2009

370 pages

ISBN:9781605586069

DOI:10.1145/1583991

General Chair:
Friedhelm Meyer auf der Heide
University of Paderborn, Germany)
,
Program Chair:
Michael A. Bender
Stony Brook University and Tokutek, Inc., USA

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

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Published: 11 August 2009

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Cited By

Cai WWen HScott MDehnavi MKulkarni MKrishnamoorthy S(2023)Transactional Composition of Nonblocking Data StructuresProceedings of the 28th ACM SIGPLAN Annual Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming10.1145/3572848.3577503(441-443)Online publication date: 25-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3572848.3577503
Li ZFeng X(2023)A program logic for obstruction-freedomFrontiers of Computer Science10.1007/s11704-023-2774-918:6Online publication date: 28-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-023-2774-9
Beadle HCai WWen HScott M(2020)Nonblocking Persistent Software Transactional Memory2020 IEEE 27th International Conference on High Performance Computing, Data, and Analytics (HiPC)10.1109/HiPC50609.2020.00042(283-293)Online publication date: Dec-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/HiPC50609.2020.00042
Gu JYu QWang XWang ZZang BGuan HChen HDan TDahlia M(2019)PiscesProceedings of the 2019 USENIX Conference on Usenix Annual Technical Conference10.5555/3358807.3358885(913-928)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2019
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Bushkov VDziuma DFatourou PGuerraoui R(2018)The PCL TheoremJournal of the ACM10.1145/326614166:1(1-66)Online publication date: 12-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3266141
Fatourou P(2017)Concurrency for the Masses: The Paradigm of Software Transactional Memory2017 19th International Symposium on Symbolic and Numeric Algorithms for Scientific Computing (SYNASC)10.1109/SYNASC.2017.00012(17-22)Online publication date: Sep-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/SYNASC.2017.00012
Fatourou PKanellou EKosmas ERabbi M(2016)WFR-TMJournal of Parallel and Distributed Computing10.1016/j.jpdc.2016.05.00296:C(134-151)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jpdc.2016.05.002
Ellen FFatourou PKosmas EMilani ATravers C(2016)Universal constructions that ensure disjoint-access parallelism and wait-freedomDistributed Computing10.1007/s00446-015-0261-829:4(251-277)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2016
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Kuznetsov PRavi SDas SKrishnaswamy DKarkar SKorman AKumar MPortmann MSastry S(2015)On Partial Wait-Freedom in Transactional MemoryProceedings of the 16th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking10.1145/2684464.2684473(1-9)Online publication date: 4-Jan-2015
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Ghosh AChaki RChaki N(2015)A new concurrency control mechanism for multi-threaded environment using transactional memoryThe Journal of Supercomputing10.1007/s11227-015-1507-871:11(4095-4115)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2015
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