research-article

Design, verification and applications of a new read-write lock algorithm

Authors:

Eric G. Mercer,

Vivek SarkarAuthors Info & Claims

SPAA '12: Proceedings of the twenty-fourth annual ACM symposium on Parallelism in algorithms and architectures

Pages 48 - 57

https://doi.org/10.1145/2312005.2312015

Published: 25 June 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Coordination and synchronization of parallel tasks is a major source of complexity in parallel programming. These constructs take many forms in practice including directed barrier and point-to-point synchronizations, termination detection of child tasks, and mutual exclusion in accesses to shared resources.

A read-write lock is a synchronization primitive that supports mutual exclusion in cases when multiple reader threads are permitted to enter a critical section concurrently (read-lock), but only a single writer thread is permitted in the critical section (write-lock). Although support for reader threads increases ideal parallelism, the read-lock functionality typically requires additional mechanisms, including expensive atomic operations, to handle multiple readers. It is not uncommon to encounter cases in practice where the overhead to support read-lock operations overshadows the benefits of concurrent read accesses, especially for small critical sections.

In this paper, we introduce a new read-write lock algorithm that reduces this overhead compared to past work. The correctness of the algorithm, including deadlock freedom, is established by using the Java Pathfinder model checker. We also show how the read-write lock primitive can be used to support high-level language constructs such as object-level isolation in Habanero-Java (HJ).

Experimental results for a read-write microbenchmark and a concurrent SortedLinkedList benchmark demonstrate that a Java-based implementation of the proposed read-write lock algorithm delivers higher scalability on multiple platforms than existing read-write lock implementations, including ReentrantReadWriteLock from the java.util.concurrent library.

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Cited By

Li TChandramouli BMadden S(2024)Performant almost-latch-free data structures using epoch protection in more depthThe VLDB Journal10.1007/s00778-024-00859-8Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00778-024-00859-8
Hance THowell JPadon OParno B(2023)Leaf: Modularity for Temporary Sharing in Separation LogicProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36227987:OOPSLA2(31-58)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3622798
Shahare VChabbi MHegde NAgrawal KShun J(2023)Protecting Locks Against Unbalanced Unlock()Proceedings of the 35th ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures10.1145/3558481.3591091(199-211)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3558481.3591091
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Design, verification and applications of a new read-write lock algorithm
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Parallel computing methodologies
    1. Parallel programming languages
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language types
        Parallel programming languages

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SPAA '12: Proceedings of the twenty-fourth annual ACM symposium on Parallelism in algorithms and architectures

June 2012

348 pages

ISBN:9781450312134

DOI:10.1145/2312005

General Chair:
Guy Blelloch
Carnegie Mellon University, USA
,
Program Chair:
Maurice Herlihy
Brown University, USA

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 25 June 2012

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SPAA '12: 24th ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures

June 25 - 27, 2012

Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 447 of 1,461 submissions, 31%

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Cited By

Li TChandramouli BMadden S(2024)Performant almost-latch-free data structures using epoch protection in more depthThe VLDB Journal10.1007/s00778-024-00859-8Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00778-024-00859-8
Hance THowell JPadon OParno B(2023)Leaf: Modularity for Temporary Sharing in Separation LogicProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36227987:OOPSLA2(31-58)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3622798
Shahare VChabbi MHegde NAgrawal KShun J(2023)Protecting Locks Against Unbalanced Unlock()Proceedings of the 35th ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures10.1145/3558481.3591091(199-211)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3558481.3591091
Dice DKogan ADan TDahlia M(2019)BRAVOProceedings of the 2019 USENIX Conference on Usenix Annual Technical Conference10.5555/3358807.3358835(315-328)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3358807.3358835
Zhang LZhang QWang GShi ZWu MGuan Y(2019)Formal Modelling and Verification of Spinlocks at Instruction Level2019 26th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC)10.1109/APSEC48747.2019.00055(355-362)Online publication date: Dec-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/APSEC48747.2019.00055
Klaftenegger DSagonas KWinblad K(2018)Queue Delegation LockingIEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems10.1109/TPDS.2017.276704629:3(687-704)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/TPDS.2017.2767046
Imam SSarkar VBoix EHaller PRicci AVarela C(2014)Savina - An Actor Benchmark SuiteProceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Programming based on Actors Agents & Decentralized Control10.1145/2687357.2687368(67-80)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2687357.2687368
Calciu IDice DLev YLuchangco VMarathe VShavit N(2013)NUMA-aware reader-writer locksACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2517327.244253248:8(157-166)Online publication date: 23-Feb-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2517327.2442532
Calciu IDice DLev YLuchangco VMarathe VShavit NNicolau AShen XAmarasinghe SVuduc R(2013)NUMA-aware reader-writer locksProceedings of the 18th ACM SIGPLAN symposium on Principles and practice of parallel programming10.1145/2442516.2442532(157-166)Online publication date: 23-Feb-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2442516.2442532

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