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The scalable commutativity rule: designing scalable software for multicore processors

Authors:

Austin T. Clements,

M. Frans Kaashoek,

Robert T. Morris,

Nickolai ZeldovichAuthors Info & Claims

Communications of the ACM, Volume 60, Issue 8

Pages 83 - 90

https://doi.org/10.1145/3068914

Published: 24 July 2017 Publication History

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Abstract

Developing software that scales on multicore processors is an inexact science dominated by guesswork, measurement, and expensive cycles of redesign and reimplementation. Current approaches are workload-driven and, hence, can reveal scalability bottlenecks only for known workloads and available software and hardware. This paper introduces an interface-driven approach to building scalable software. This approach is based on the scalable commutativity rule, which, informally stated, says that whenever interface operations commute, they can be implemented in a way that scales. We formalize this rule and prove it correct for any machine on which conflict-free operations scale, such as current cache-coherent multicore machines. The rule also enables a better design process for scalable software: programmers can now reason about scalability from the earliest stages of interface definition through software design, implementation, and evaluation.

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Cited By

Cardoso DFoss LDu Bois A(2021)A Graph Transformation System formalism for correctness of Transactional Memory algorithmsProceedings of the 25th Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages10.1145/3475061.3475080(49-57)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3475061.3475080
Cardoso DFoss LBois A(2019)A Graph Transformation System formalism for Software Transactional Memory OpacityProceedings of the XXIII Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages10.1145/3355378.3355387(3-10)Online publication date: 23-Sep-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3355378.3355387
Kepner JHoule MJones MKlein AMichaleas PMullen JProut ARosa AYee CReuther AGadepally VMilechin LSamsi SArcand WBestor DBergeron WByun CHubbell M(2019)Streaming 1.9 Billion Hypersparse Network Updates per Second with D4M2019 IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC)10.1109/HPEC.2019.8916508(1-6)Online publication date: Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/HPEC.2019.8916508
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

The scalable commutativity rule: designing scalable software for multicore processors
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Architectures
    1. Parallel architectures
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language types
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems
        Process management
        Concurrency control

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Published In

cover image Communications of the ACM

Communications of the ACM Volume 60, Issue 8

August 2017

92 pages

ISSN:0001-0782

EISSN:1557-7317

DOI:10.1145/3127343

Editor:
Andrew A. Chien
Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2017 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International 4.0 License.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 24 July 2017

Published in CACM Volume 60, Issue 8

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Cited By

Cardoso DFoss LDu Bois A(2021)A Graph Transformation System formalism for correctness of Transactional Memory algorithmsProceedings of the 25th Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages10.1145/3475061.3475080(49-57)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3475061.3475080
Cardoso DFoss LBois A(2019)A Graph Transformation System formalism for Software Transactional Memory OpacityProceedings of the XXIII Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages10.1145/3355378.3355387(3-10)Online publication date: 23-Sep-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3355378.3355387
Kepner JHoule MJones MKlein AMichaleas PMullen JProut ARosa AYee CReuther AGadepally VMilechin LSamsi SArcand WBestor DBergeron WByun CHubbell M(2019)Streaming 1.9 Billion Hypersparse Network Updates per Second with D4M2019 IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC)10.1109/HPEC.2019.8916508(1-6)Online publication date: Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/HPEC.2019.8916508
Kepner JCho KClaffy KGadepally VMichaleas PMilechin L(2019)Hypersparse Neural Network Analysis of Large-Scale Internet Traffic2019 IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC)10.1109/HPEC.2019.8916263(1-11)Online publication date: Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/HPEC.2019.8916263
Kepner JBrightwell REdelman AGadepally VJananthan HJones MMadden SMichaleas POkhravi HPedretti KReuther ASterling TStonebraker M(2018)TabulaROSA: Tabular Operating System Architecture for Massively Parallel Heterogeneous Compute Engines2018 IEEE High Performance extreme Computing Conference (HPEC)10.1109/HPEC.2018.8547577(1-8)Online publication date: Sep-2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/HPEC.2018.8547577

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