NDLI: Monotonic counters: a new mechanism for thread synchronization

Content Provider	IEEE Xplore Digital Library
Author	Thornley, J. Mani Chandy, K.
Copyright Year	2000
Description	Author affiliation: Dept. of Comput. Sci., Virginia Univ., Charlottesville, VA, USA (Thornley, J.)
Abstract	Only a handful of fundamental mechanisms for synchronizing the access of concurrent threads to shared memory are widely implemented and used. These include locks, condition variables, semaphores, barriers, and monitors. In this paper, we introduce a new synchronization mechanism-monotonic counters-and make a case for its addition to this group. Unlike most other synchronization mechanisms, monotonic counters were designed primarily for multiprocessing, rather than for systems programming. Counters have a very simple definition: a counter object has a nonnegative value, an Increment operation, and a Check operation. Increment atomically increases the counter, and Check suspends until the counter reaches a specified level. We demonstrate that many practical thread synchronization patterns can be expressed more elegantly using counters than with other synchronization mechanisms. Of particular importance, the monotonicity of counters can be used to guarantee deterministic synchronization and the equivalence of multithreaded and sequential execution. In terms of implementation, counters are distinguished from traditional synchronization mechanisms, in that they have a dynamically varying number of thread suspension queues. We give several examples of multithreaded programs that use counter synchronization, and give an implementation of counters on top of locks and condition variables.
Starting Page	573
Ending Page	582
File Size	167713
Page Count	10
File Format	PDF
ISBN	0769505740
DOI	10.1109/IPDPS.2000.846037
Language	English
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Publisher Date	2000-05-01
Publisher Place	Mexico
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Rights Holder	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subject Keyword	Counting circuits Yarn Reactive power Electrical capacitance tomography Data structures Concurrent computing Computer science Interference Interleaved codes Mechanical factors
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

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