Synchronization power depends on the register size (Preliminary Version)

Though it is common practice to treat synchronization primitives for multiprocessors as abstract data types, they are in reality machine instructions on registers. A crucial theoretical question with practical implications is the relationship between the size of the register and its computational power. The authors study this question and choose as a first target the popular compare and swap operation (which is the basis for many modern multiprocessor architectures). The results of this paper suggest that a complexity hierarchy for multiprocessor synchronization operations should be based on the space complexity of synchronization registers and not on the number of so called "synchronization objects". >

Authors

• Yehuda Afek
• Gideon Stupp

Keywords

• Registers
• Computer science
• Hardware
• Computer architecture
• Read-write memory
• Testing
• Number Of Values
• Decision Task
• Swap Operation
• Input Values
• Type Of Operation
• Space Complexity
• Life Processes
• Front End
• K-space
• History Variables
• Decision Value
• Consensus Protocol
• Internal Operations
• Linearizable
• Proof Of Claim
• Shared Memory
• Virtual Surgery