RMR-efficient implementations of comparison primitives using read and write operations

• Published in: Distributed computing Vol. 25; no. 2; pp. 109 - 162
• Main Authors: Golab, Wojciech, Hadzilacos, Vassos, Hendler, Danny, Woelfel, Philipp
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer-Verlag 01-05-2012; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Algorithms; Complexity; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Hardware; Computer networks; Computer Science; Computer simulation; Computer Systems Organization and Communication Networks; Distributed processing; Mathematical models; Multiprocessor; Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems; Stress concentration; Theory of Computation; Remote memory references; Mutual exclusion; Comparison primitives; Shared memory; Consensus; Load-linked/store-conditional
• ISSN: 0178-2770; 1432-0452
• DOI: 10.1007/s00446-011-0150-8

We consider asynchronous multiprocessors where processes communicate only by reading or writing shared memory. We show how to implement consensus, compare-and-swap and other comparison primitives, as well as load-linked/store-conditional (LL/SC) using only a
constant
number of remote memory references (RMRs), in both the cache-coherent and the distributed-shared-memory models of such multiprocessors. Our implementations are blocking, rather than wait-free: they ensure progress provided all processes that invoke the implemented primitive are live. Our results imply that any algorithm using read and write operations, and either comparison primitives or LL/SC, can be simulated by an algorithm that uses read and write operations only, with at most a constant-factor increase in RMR complexity.