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Transactional memory
Transactional memory originated in database theory, provides an alternative strategy for process synchronization.
A memory transaction is atomic is a sequence of memory read–write operations. The memory transaction is committed, if all operations in a transaction are completed. Otherwise, the operations must be aborted and rolled back. The ease of transactional memory can be obtained through features added to a programming language. Consider an example. Suppose we have a function update() that modifies shared data. Traditionally, this function would be written using mutex locks (or semaphores) such as the following −
void update (){
acquire(); /* modify shared data */
release();
}However, using synchronization mechanisms such as mutex locks and semaphores involves many potential problems, including deadlock. Additionally, as the number of threads increases, traditional locking scales less well, because the level of contention among threads for lock ownership becomes very high. As an alternative to traditional locking methods, new features that take advantage of transactional memory can be added to a programming language. In our example, suppose we add the construct atomic{S}, which ensures that the operations in S execute as a transaction. This allows us to rewrite the update() function as follows −
void update (){
atomic {
/* modify shared data */
}
}The advantage of using such a mechanism rather than locks is that the transactional memory system—not the developer-is responsible guaranteeing atomicity. Additionally, because no locks are involved, deadlock is not possible. Furthermore, a transactional memory system can identify which statements in atomic blocks can be executed concurrently, such as concurrent read access to a shared variable. It is, of course, possible for a programmer to identify these situations and use reader-writer locks, but the task becomes increasingly difficult as the number of threads within an application grows. Transactional memory can be implemented in either software or hardware. Software transactional memory(STM), which implements transactional memory exclusively in software—no special hardware is needed. It works by inserting instrumentation code inside transaction blocks. The code is inserted by a compiler and manages each transaction by examining where statements may run concurrently and where specific low-level locking is required. Hardware transactional memory (HTM) uses hardware cache hierarchies and cache coherency protocols to manage and resolve conflicts involving shared data residing in separate processors’ caches. It requires no special code instrumentation and thus has less overhead than STM. However, HTM does require that existing cache hierarchies and cache coherency protocols be modified to support transactional memory. Transactional memory has existed for several years without widespread implementation. However, the growth of multicore systems and the associated emphasis on concurrent and parallel programming have prompted a significant amount of research in this area on the part of both academics and commercial software and hardware vendors.
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