Using Histories to Implement Atomic Objects

Abstract

In this paper we describe an approach to implementing atomicity. Atomicity requires that computations appear to be all-or-nothing and executed in a serialization order. The approach we describe has three characteristics. First, it utilizes the semantics of an application to improve concurrency. Second, it reduces the complexity of application-dependent synchronization code by analyzing the process of writing it. Third, our approach hides the protocol used to arrive at a serialization order from the applications. As a result, different protocols can be used without affecting the applications. Our approach uses a history abstraction. The history captures the ordering relationship among concurrent computations. By determining what types of computations exist in the history and their parameters, a computation can determine whether it can proceed. © 1989, ACM. All rights reserved.