A simple deterministic algorithm for guaranteeing the forward progress of transactions

This paper describes a remarkably simple deterministic (not probabilistic) contention-management algorithm for guaranteeing the forward progress of transactions - avoiding deadlocks, livelocks, and other anomalies. The transactions must be finite (no infinite loops), but on each restart, a transacti...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Leiserson, Charles E (Contributor)
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier, 2018-04-23T16:54:56Z.
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Summary:This paper describes a remarkably simple deterministic (not probabilistic) contention-management algorithm for guaranteeing the forward progress of transactions - avoiding deadlocks, livelocks, and other anomalies. The transactions must be finite (no infinite loops), but on each restart, a transaction may access different shared-memory locations. The algorithm supports irrevocable transactions as long as the transaction satisfies a simple ordering constraint. In particular, a transaction that accesses only one shared-memory location is never aborted. The algorithm is suitable for both hardware and software transactional-memory systems. It also can be used in some contexts as a locking protocol for implementing transactions "by hand.".