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Proving Non-opacity

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Distributed Computing (DISC 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8205))

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Abstract

Guerraoui and Kapalka defined opacity as a safety criterion for transactional memory algorithms in 2008. Researchers have shown how to prove opacity, while little is known about pitfalls that can lead to non-opacity. In this paper, we identify two problems that lead to non-opacity, we present automatic tool support for finding such problems, and we prove an impossibility result. We first show that the well-known TM algorithms DSTM and McRT don’t satisfy opacity. DSTM suffers from a write-skew anomaly, while McRT suffers from a write-exposure anomaly. We then prove that for direct-update TM algorithms, opacity is incompatible with a liveness criterion called local progress, even for fault-free systems. Our result implies that if TM algorithm designers want both opacity and local progress, they should avoid direct-update algorithms.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    Mohsen Lesani & Jens Palsberg

Authors
  1. Mohsen Lesani
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  2. Jens Palsberg
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Blavatnik School of Computer Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel-Aviv, Israel

    Yehuda Afek

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Lesani, M., Palsberg, J. (2013). Proving Non-opacity. In: Afek, Y. (eds) Distributed Computing. DISC 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8205. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41527-2_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41527-2_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-41526-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-41527-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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