MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

Memory Consistency Models for High Performance Distributed Computing

Victor Luchangco

Friday, October 15, 1999
1:00 PM
NE43-516
Theory of Distributed Systems Seminars

Abstract

[This is work for my thesis.]

I develop a formal framework for specifying and reasoning about models for distributed memory, particularly memories with weak consistency guarantees. This is intended primarily for programmers of systems that support some form of concurrent processes that share memory, so that they can reason about the correctness of their programs. It is also useful for implementors of such systems, in determining what guarantees their implementations provide, and in assessing the relative merits of different memory consistency models. I believe this framework supports a theory that captures the key concepts and mechanisms needed for contemporary shared memory systems, and can be extended to accomodate new memory guarantees, synchronization primitives, and programming disciplines.