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Is transactional memory an oxymoron?

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Mark D. HillAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment, Volume 1, Issue 1

Page 1

https://doi.org/10.14778/1453856.1453858

Published: 01 August 2008 Publication History

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Abstract

Transactional memory (TM) was invented 15 years ago [1]. Recently, however, TM activity has exploded [2], as the proliferation of multicore chips has provoked researchers to revisit support for parallel programming. Since some regard me as a TM expert, most of my talk will summarize TM's goals and implementation options, primarily by developing a taxonomy and using Wisconsin LogTM [3, 4] as a case study. In particular, I will consider TM implementations via software, hardware, and hybrids, as well as important design choices, such as how to buffer TM writes and when to detect TM conflicts.

I will conclude with forward-looking comments regarding TM and database transactions. In theory, the two concepts have many similarities. In practice, however, they differ substantially. First, today's TM exclusively targets concurrency, while database transactions seek reliability first. Second, TM implementations focus in operations with caches and memory, while database transactions deal more with the more substantial access gap between memory and disks. Finally, I will speculate on cross-fertilization opportunities between TM and database transactions. I will not provide answers here, in part because you are the database experts. Nevertheless, I hope to encourage us all to ask the right questions.

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Zhang GChiu VSanchez DHsu WYang CLipasti MLee H(2016)Exploiting semantic commutativity in hardware speculationThe 49th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture10.5555/3195638.3195679(1-12)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3195638.3195679
Zhang GChiu VSanchez D(2016)Exploiting semantic commutativity in hardware speculation2016 49th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO)10.1109/MICRO.2016.7783737(1-12)Online publication date: Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/MICRO.2016.7783737
Karnagel TDementiev RRajwar RLai KLegler TSchlegel BLehner W(2014)Improving in-memory database index performance with Intel^® Transactional Synchronization Extensions2014 IEEE 20th International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA)10.1109/HPCA.2014.6835957(476-487)Online publication date: Feb-2014
https://doi.org/10.1109/HPCA.2014.6835957

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Is transactional memory an oxymoron?

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cover image Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment

Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment Volume 1, Issue 1

August 2008

1216 pages

ISSN:2150-8097

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VLDB Endowment

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Published: 01 August 2008

Published in PVLDB Volume 1, Issue 1

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Zhang GChiu VSanchez DHsu WYang CLipasti MLee H(2016)Exploiting semantic commutativity in hardware speculationThe 49th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture10.5555/3195638.3195679(1-12)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3195638.3195679
Zhang GChiu VSanchez D(2016)Exploiting semantic commutativity in hardware speculation2016 49th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO)10.1109/MICRO.2016.7783737(1-12)Online publication date: Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/MICRO.2016.7783737
Karnagel TDementiev RRajwar RLai KLegler TSchlegel BLehner W(2014)Improving in-memory database index performance with Intel^® Transactional Synchronization Extensions2014 IEEE 20th International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA)10.1109/HPCA.2014.6835957(476-487)Online publication date: Feb-2014
https://doi.org/10.1109/HPCA.2014.6835957
Cafarella MHalevy AMadhavan J(2011)Structured data on the webCommunications of the ACM10.1145/1897816.189783954:2(72-79)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1897816.1897839

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Safe privatization in transactional memory

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Safe privatization in transactional memory

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