Article

Using Hardware Memory Protection to Build a High-Performance, Strongly-Atomic Hybrid Transactional Memory

Authors:

Naveen Neelakantam,

Craig ZillesAuthors Info & Claims

ISCA '08: Proceedings of the 35th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

Pages 115 - 126

https://doi.org/10.1109/ISCA.2008.34

Published: 01 June 2008 Publication History

Abstract

We demonstrate how fine-grained memory protection can be used in support of transactional memory systems: first showing how a software transactional memory system (STM) can be made strongly atomic by using memory protection on transactionally-held state, then showing how such a strongly-atomic STM can be used with a bounded hardware TM system to build a hybrid TM system in which zero-overhead hardware transactions may safely run concurrently with potentially-conflicting software transactions. We experimentally demonstrate how this hybrid TM organization avoids the common-case overheads associated with previous hybrid TM proposals, achieving performance rivaling an unbounded HTM system without the hardware complexity of ensuring completion of arbitrary transactions in hardware. As part of our findings, we identify key policies regarding contention management within and across the hardware and software TM components that are key to achieving robust performance with a hybrid TM.

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Reynolds TProcter AHarrison WAllwein G(2019)The Mechanized Marriage of Effects and Monads with Applications to High-assurance HardwareACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/327428218:1(1-26)Online publication date: 8-Jan-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3274282
Zhang MHuang JCao MBond M(2015)Low-overhead software transactional memory with progress guarantees and strong semanticsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2858788.268851050:8(97-108)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2858788.2688510
Zhang MHuang JCao MBond MCohen AGrove D(2015)Low-overhead software transactional memory with progress guarantees and strong semanticsProceedings of the 20th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming10.1145/2688500.2688510(97-108)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2015
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Index Terms

Using Hardware Memory Protection to Build a High-Performance, Strongly-Atomic Hybrid Transactional Memory
1. Hardware
  1. Hardware validation
  2. Integrated circuits
    1. Semiconductor memory
2. Theory of computation
  1. Models of computation
    1. Concurrency
      1. Parallel computing models

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ISCA '08: Proceedings of the 35th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

June 2008

449 pages

ISBN:9780769531748

ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News Volume 36, Issue 3
June 2008
449 pages
ISSN:0163-5964
DOI:10.1145/1394608
Issue’s Table of Contents

Sponsors

SIGARCH: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Architecture

Publisher

IEEE Computer Society

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 June 2008

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ISCA08

Sponsor:

SIGARCH

ISCA08: The 35th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

June 21 - 25, 2008

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ISCA '08 Paper Acceptance Rate 37 of 259 submissions, 14%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 543 of 3,203 submissions, 17%

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ISCA '25

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The 52nd Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

June 21 - 25, 2025

Tokyo , Japan

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Cited By

Reynolds TProcter AHarrison WAllwein G(2019)The Mechanized Marriage of Effects and Monads with Applications to High-assurance HardwareACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/327428218:1(1-26)Online publication date: 8-Jan-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3274282
Zhang MHuang JCao MBond M(2015)Low-overhead software transactional memory with progress guarantees and strong semanticsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2858788.268851050:8(97-108)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2858788.2688510
Zhang MHuang JCao MBond MCohen AGrove D(2015)Low-overhead software transactional memory with progress guarantees and strong semanticsProceedings of the 20th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming10.1145/2688500.2688510(97-108)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2688500.2688510
Bond MKulkarni MCao MZhang MFathi Salmi MBiswas SSengupta AHuang J(2013)OCTETACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2544173.250951948:10(693-712)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2544173.2509519
Bond MKulkarni MCao MZhang MFathi Salmi MBiswas SSengupta AHuang JHosking AEugster PLopes C(2013)OCTETProceedings of the 2013 ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Object oriented programming systems languages & applications10.1145/2509136.2509519(693-712)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2509136.2509519
Jafri SVoskuilen GVijaykumar T(2013)Wait-n-GoTMACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2499368.245117348:4(521-534)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2499368.2451173
Jafri SVoskuilen GVijaykumar T(2013)Wait-n-GoTMACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News10.1145/2490301.245117341:1(521-534)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2490301.2451173
Jafri SVoskuilen GVijaykumar TSarkar VBodik R(2013)Wait-n-GoTMProceedings of the eighteenth international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems10.1145/2451116.2451173(521-534)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2451116.2451173
Stipić STomić SZyulkyarov FCristal AUnsal OValero MRosenstiel WMacii E(2012)TagTM - accelerating STMs with hardware tags for fast meta-data accessProceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe10.5555/2492708.2492720(39-44)Online publication date: 12-Mar-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2492708.2492720
Greathouse JXin HLuo YAustin T(2012)A case for unlimited watchpointsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2248487.215099447:4(159-172)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2248487.2150994
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