Serializability in multi-level monitor environments
Pages 855 - 861
Abstract
This paper presents a method of proving the correctness of systems which allow process synchronization. It is assumed that a system is modelled as a collection of monitors which cooperate to fulfill requests for service submitted to the system by user processes. Such systems can be proved correct in two steps. First, show that each user request is handled correctly under the assumption that there is no other concurrent activity in the system. Second, show that when requests are processed concurrently, the results are the same as would be obtained by processing the requests serially.
The purpose of this paper is to establish a set of conditions which will be sufficient to guarantee that concurrent operation will be equivalent to serial operation. Given such conditions, we establish restrictions on the structure of a system to guarantee this equivalence. These restrictions provide insight into the questions as to how the system modules should be constructed and how these modules should he interconnected.
References
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Floyd, R.W. Assigning meanings to programs. In Mathematical Aspects of Computer Science, Amer. Math. Soc., 1967, pp. 19-32.
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Ashcroft, E.A. Proving assertions about parallel programs. Research Rep. CS-73-01, Dept. of Applied Analysis and Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 1973.
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Lauer, N.C. Correctness in operating systems. Ph.D. Thesis, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1972.
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Levitt, K.N. The application of program proving techniques to the verification of synchronization processes. AFIPS Conf. Proc., Vol. 41, 1972.
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Owicki, S.S. Axiomatic proof techniques for parallel programs. Ph.D. Thesis, Cornell University, 1975.
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Lipton, R.J. Reduction: A method of proving properties of parallel programs. CACM, Vol. 18, Dec. 1975.
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Eswaran, K.P., Gray, J.H., Lorie, R.A., and Traiger, L.I. The notions of consistency and predicate locks in a database system. CACM Vol. 19, Nov. 1976.
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Silberschatz, A. Correctness in asynchronous systems. Proceedings of the 1976 Conference on Information Sciences and Systems, Johns Hopkins, March 1976.
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Silberschatz, A. Correctness and modularity in asynchronous systems. Ph.D. thesis, S.U.N.Y. at Stony Brook, Aug. 1976.
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Hoare, C.A.R. Monitors: An operating system structuring concept. CACM, Vol. 17, Oct. 1974.
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Akkoyunlu, E.A., Bernstein, A.J., Schneider, F.B., and Silberschatz, A. Condition for the equivalence of synchronous and asynchronous systems.IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering,| (to appear).
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Brinch Hansen, P. The programming language Concurrent Pascal. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 1, June 1975.
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Kessels, J.L.W. An alternative to event queues for synchronization in monitors, CACM, Vol. 20, July 1977.
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Silberschatz, A. Correctness in parallel systems, Technical Report #19, The University of Texas at Dallas, 1977.
Index Terms
- Serializability in multi-level monitor environments
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January 1978
990 pages
Copyright © 1978 ACM.
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Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 01 January 1978
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