A composable deadlock-free approach to object-based isolation

Abstract

A widely used principle in the design of concurrent programs is isolation – the property that a task can operate on shared data without interference from other tasks. In this paper, we introduce a new approach to object-based isolation that is guaranteed to be deadlockfree, while still retaining the rollback benefits of transactions. Further, our approach differentiates between read and write accesses in its concurrency control mechanisms. Finally, since the generality of our approach precludes the use of static ordering for deadlock avoidance, our runtime ensures deadlock-freedom by detecting and resolving deadlocks at runtime automatically, without involving the programmer.