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View all- Lesani MXia LKaseorg ABell CChlipala APierce BZdancewic S(2022)C4: verified transactional objectsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35273246:OOPSLA1(1-31)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
Characterizing Transactional Memory Consistency Conditions Using Observational Refinement
Article No.: 2, Pages 1 - 44
Abstract
Transactional memory (TM) facilitates the development of concurrent applications by letting a programmer designate certain code blocks as atomic. The common approach to stating TM correctness is through a consistency condition that restricts the possible TM executions. Unfortunately, existing consistency conditions fall short of formalizing the intuitive semantics of atomic blocks through which programmers use a TM. To close this gap, we formalize programmer expectations as observational refinement between TM implementations. This states that properties of a program using a concrete TM implementation can be established by analyzing its behavior with an abstract TM, serving as a specification of the concrete one.
We show that a variant of Transactional Memory Specification (TMS), a TM consistency condition, is equivalent to observational refinement for a programming language where local variables are rolled back upon a transaction abort. We thereby establish that TMS is the weakest acceptable condition for this case. We then propose a new consistency condition, called Strong Transactional Memory Specification (STMS), and show that it is equivalent to observational refinement for a language where local variables are not rolled back upon aborts. Finally, we show that under certain natural assumptions on TM implementations, STMS is equivalent to a variant of a well-known condition of opacity.
Our results suggest a new approach to evaluating TM consistency conditions and enable TM implementors and language designers to make better-informed decisions.
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- Characterizing Transactional Memory Consistency Conditions Using Observational Refinement
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Publication History
Published: 18 December 2017
Accepted: 01 August 2017
Revised: 01 July 2017
Received: 01 June 2016
Published in JACM Volume 65, Issue 1
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- Broadcom Foundation and Tel Aviv University Authentication Initiative
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View all- Lesani MXia LKaseorg ABell CChlipala APierce BZdancewic S(2022)C4: verified transactional objectsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35273246:OOPSLA1(1-31)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
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