Safety of live transactions in transactional memory: TMS is necessary and sufficient

Hagit Attiya; Alexey Gotsman; Sandeep Hans; Noam Rinetzky

doi:10.1007/978-3-662-45174-8_26

Safety of live transactions in transactional memory: TMS is necessary and sufficient

Hagit Attiya^*, Alexey Gotsman, Sandeep Hans, Noam Rinetzky

^*Corresponding author for this work

School of Computer Science

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

Abstract

One of the main challenges in stating the correctness of transactional memory (TM) systems is the need to provide guarantees on the system state observed by live transactions, i.e., those that have not yet committed or aborted. A TM correctness condition should be weak enough to allow flexibility in implementation, yet strong enough to disallow undesirable TM behavior, which can lead to run-time errors in live transactions. The latter feature is formalized by observational refinement between TM implementations, stating that properties of a program using a concrete TMimplementation 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 correctness condition, is equivalent to observational refinement for the common programming model in which local variables are rolled back upon a transaction abort and, hence, is the weakest acceptable condition for this case. This is challenging due to the nontrivial formulation of TMS, which allows different aborted and live transactions to have different views of the system state. Our proof reveals some natural, but subtle, assumptions on the TM required for the equivalence result.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Distributed Computing - 28th International Symposium, DISC 2014, Proceedings
Editors	Fabian Kuhn
Publisher	Springer Verlag
Pages	376-390
Number of pages	15
ISBN (Electronic)	9783662451731
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45174-8_26
State	Published - 2014
Event	28th International Symposium on Distributed Computing, DISC 2014 - Austin, United States Duration: 12 Oct 2014 → 15 Oct 2014

Publication series

Name	Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume	8784
ISSN (Print)	0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)	1611-3349

Conference

Conference	28th International Symposium on Distributed Computing, DISC 2014
Country/Territory	United States
City	Austin
Period	12/10/14 → 15/10/14

Access to Document

10.1007/978-3-662-45174-8_26

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Attiya, H., Gotsman, A., Hans, S., & Rinetzky, N. (2014). Safety of live transactions in transactional memory: TMS is necessary and sufficient. In F. Kuhn (Ed.), Distributed Computing - 28th International Symposium, DISC 2014, Proceedings (pp. 376-390). (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 8784). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45174-8_26

Attiya, Hagit ; Gotsman, Alexey ; Hans, Sandeep et al. / Safety of live transactions in transactional memory : TMS is necessary and sufficient. Distributed Computing - 28th International Symposium, DISC 2014, Proceedings. editor / Fabian Kuhn. Springer Verlag, 2014. pp. 376-390 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)).

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abstract = "One of the main challenges in stating the correctness of transactional memory (TM) systems is the need to provide guarantees on the system state observed by live transactions, i.e., those that have not yet committed or aborted. A TM correctness condition should be weak enough to allow flexibility in implementation, yet strong enough to disallow undesirable TM behavior, which can lead to run-time errors in live transactions. The latter feature is formalized by observational refinement between TM implementations, stating that properties of a program using a concrete TMimplementation 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 correctness condition, is equivalent to observational refinement for the common programming model in which local variables are rolled back upon a transaction abort and, hence, is the weakest acceptable condition for this case. This is challenging due to the nontrivial formulation of TMS, which allows different aborted and live transactions to have different views of the system state. Our proof reveals some natural, but subtle, assumptions on the TM required for the equivalence result.",

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Attiya, H, Gotsman, A, Hans, S & Rinetzky, N 2014, Safety of live transactions in transactional memory: TMS is necessary and sufficient. in F Kuhn (ed.), Distributed Computing - 28th International Symposium, DISC 2014, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 8784, Springer Verlag, pp. 376-390, 28th International Symposium on Distributed Computing, DISC 2014, Austin, United States, 12/10/14. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45174-8_26

Safety of live transactions in transactional memory : TMS is necessary and sufficient. / Attiya, Hagit; Gotsman, Alexey; Hans, Sandeep et al.

Distributed Computing - 28th International Symposium, DISC 2014, Proceedings. ed. / Fabian Kuhn. Springer Verlag, 2014. p. 376-390 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 8784).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

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Attiya H, Gotsman A, Hans S, Rinetzky N. Safety of live transactions in transactional memory: TMS is necessary and sufficient. In Kuhn F, editor, Distributed Computing - 28th International Symposium, DISC 2014, Proceedings. Springer Verlag. 2014. p. 376-390. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)). doi: 10.1007/978-3-662-45174-8_26

Safety of live transactions in transactional memory: TMS is necessary and sufficient

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