The Cost of Concurrent, Low-Contention Read-Modify-Write

In this work, we embark on a study of the possibility (or impossibility), and the corresponding costs, of devising concurrent, low-contention implementations of atomic Read-Modify-Write operations (abbreviated as RMW), in a distributed system. We consider a natural class of RMW operations which give rise to a certain class of algebraic groups that we introduce here and call monotone groups. Our chief combinatorial instrument is a Monotone Linearizability Lemma, which establishes inherent ordering constraints of linearizability for a certain class of executions of any distributed system that implements a monotone RMW operation. The end results of our study specifically apply to implementations of (monotone) RMW operations that are based on switching networks, a recently introduced class of concurrent, low-contention data structures that generalize counting networks. These results are negative and they are shown through a modular use of the Monotone Linearizability Lemma. In particular...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: SIROCCO
• Authors: Costas Busch, Marios Mavronicolas, Paul G. Spirakis
• Keywords: Monotone Linearizability Lemma, Monotone Rmw Operation, Rmw Operation, SIROCCO 2003, SIROCCO 2007