Wait-Free CAS-Based Algorithms: The Burden of the Past

Authors Denis Bédin, François Lépine, Achour Mostéfaoui, Damien Perez, Matthieu Perrin



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Author Details

Denis Bédin
  • Université de Nantes, France
François Lépine
  • Université de Nantes, France
Achour Mostéfaoui
  • LS2N, Université de Nantes, France
Damien Perez
  • Université de Nantes, France
Matthieu Perrin
  • LS2N, Université de Nantes, France

Cite AsGet BibTex

Denis Bédin, François Lépine, Achour Mostéfaoui, Damien Perez, and Matthieu Perrin. Wait-Free CAS-Based Algorithms: The Burden of the Past. In 35th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 209, pp. 11:1-11:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)
https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2021.11

Abstract

Herlihy proved that CAS is universal in the classical computing system model composed of an a priori known number of processes. This means that CAS can implement, together with reads and writes, any object with a sequential specification. For this, he proposed the first universal construction capable of emulating any data structure. It has recently been proved that CAS is still universal in the infinite arrival computing model, a model where any number of processes can be created on the fly (e.g. multi-threaded systems). In this paper, we prove that CAS does not allow to implement wait-free and linearizable visible objects in the infinite model with a space complexity bounded by the number of active processes (i.e. ones that have operations in progress on this object). This paper also shows that this lower bound is tight, in the sense that this dependency can be made as low as desired (e.g. logarithmic) by proposing a wait-free and linearizable universal construction, using the compare-and-swap operation, whose space complexity in the number of ever issued operations is defined by a parameter that can be linked to any unbounded function.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Distributed computing models
  • Software and its engineering → Process synchronization
  • Computer systems organization → Multicore architectures
  • Computer systems organization → Dependable and fault-tolerant systems and networks
Keywords
  • Compare-And-Swap
  • Concurrent Object
  • Infinite arrival model
  • Linearizability
  • Memory complexity
  • Multi-Threaded Systems
  • Shared-Memory
  • Universality
  • Wait-freedom

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