The following three articles are full versions of extended abstracts that were presented at the Twenty-Third ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGART Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS) held in Paris, France, June 14–16, 2004. After the conference, the authors were invited to submit full versions of their papers for publication in JACM. The articles have been reviewed according to the standard JACM refereeing process. We wish to thank the PODS Program Committee for their help in selecting these papers.

Journal of the ACM

https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/hongseok.yang/paper/TCS10-concurrent-objects.pdf

Abstraction for concurrent objects

We propose an axiomatic generic framework for modelling weak memory. We show how to instantiate this framework for SC, TSO, C++ restricted to release-acquire atomics, and Power. For Power, we compare our model to a preceding operational model in which we found a flaw. To do so, we define an operational model that we show equivalent to our axiomatic model. 
We also propose a model for ARM. Our testing on this architecture revealed a behaviour later acknowledged as a bug by ARM, and more recently 33 additional anomalies. 
We offer a new simulation tool, called herd, which allows the user to specify the model of his choice in a concise way. Given a specification of a model, the tool becomes a simulator for that model. The tool relies on an axiomatic description; this choice allows us to outperform all previous simulation tools. Additionally, we confirm that verification time is vastly improved, in the case of bounded model-checking. 
Finally, we put our models in perspective, in the light of empirical data obtained by analysing the C and C++ code of a Debian Linux distribution. We present our new analysis tool, called mole, which explores a piece of code to find the weak memory idioms that it uses.

Herding Cats - Modelling, simulation, testing, and data-mining for weak memory

Concurrent data structures are usually designed to satisfy correctness conditions such as sequential consistency and linearizability. In this paper, we consider the following fundamental question: what guarantees are provided by these conditions for client programs? We formally show that these conditions can be characterized in terms of observational refinement. Our study also provides a new understanding of sequential consistency and linearizability in terms of abstraction of dependency between computation steps of client programs.

/pdf/abstraction-for-concurrent-objects-4m9579m3kf.pdf

Abstraction for Concurrent Objects

Parallel Programming : for Multicore and Cluster Systems. 2. Edition

The traditional assumption about memory is that a read returns the value written by the most recent write. However, in a shared memory multiprocessor several processes independently and simultaneously submit reads and writes resulting in a partial order of memory operations. In this partial order, the definition of most recent write may be ambiguous. Memory consistency models have been developed to specify what values may be returned by a read given that memory operations may only be partially ordered. Before this work, consistency models were defined independently. Each model followed a set of rules which was separate from the rules of every other model. In our work, we have defined a set of four consistency properties. Any subset of the four properties yields a set of rules which constitute a consistency model. Every consistency model previously described in the literature can be defined based on our four properties. Therefore, we present these properties as a unfied theory of shared memory consistency.Our unified theory provides several benefits. First, we claim that these four properties capture the underlying structure of memory consistency. That is, the goal of memory consistency is to ensure certain declarative properties which can be intuitively understood by a programmer, and hence allow him or her to write a correct program. Our unified theory provides a uniform, formal definition of all previously described consistency models, and in addition some combinations of properties produce new models that have not yet been described. We believe these new models will prove to be useful because they are based on declarative properties which programmers desire to be enforced. Finally, we introduce the idea of selecting a consistency model as an on-line activity. Before our work, a shared memory program would run start to finish under a single consistency model. Our unified theory allows the consistency model to change as the program runs while maintaining a consistent definition of what values may be returned by each read.

A unified theory of shared memory consistency

Memory consistency models have been developed to specify what values may be returned by a read given that, in a distributed system, memory operations may only be partially ordered. Before this work, consistency models were defined independently. Each model followed a set of rules which was separate from the rules of every other model. In our work we have defined a set of four consistency properties. Any subset of the four properties yields a set of rules which constitute a consistency model. Every consistency model previously described in the literature can be defined based on our four properties. Therefore, we present these properties as a unfied theory of shared memory consistency.

A Unified Theory of Shared Memory Consistency

The traditional assumption about memory is that a read returns the value written by the most recent write. However in multiprocessing environments, the processes independently and simultaneously submit reads and writes resulting in a partial order of memory operations. In this partial order, the definition of most recent may be ambiguous. Memory consistency models were developed to formally specify the values that may be returned by read operations given that memory operations may be only partially ordered. Before this work, selecting a consistency model was seen as an off-line activity. Any particular program run would execute start to finish under a single consistency model. One hypothesis of this work is that the abstraction of a shared memory interface is useful for many types of applications. In addition, these applications may want to change consistency at run-time. The class of collaboration application is used as an example of programs that may want to operate under different consistency at different points in their execution. A new lattice based framework of consistency models is defined that allows all useful consistency models in the literature to be defined by a combination of a common set of properties. This was not previously possible. Further, transitions between any two consistency models, as is needed in a collaboration system, can be described by a path in the lattice. In addition, a transition theory is presented specifying the allowable behavior of memory when a single program submits operations under more than one consistency model.

Consistency model transitions in shared memory

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A unified theory of shared memory consistency

A Unified Theory of Shared Memory Consistency

Consistency model transitions in shared memory