Fast and generalized polynomial time memory consistency verification

Abstract

The problem of verifying multi-threaded execution against the memory consistency model of a processor is known to be an NP hard problem. However polynomial time algorithms exist that detect almost all failures in such execution. These are often used in practice for microprocessor verification. We present a low complexity and fully parallelized algorithm to check program execution against the processor consistency model. In addition our algorithm is general enough to support a number of consistency models without any degradation in performance. An implementation of this algorithm is currently used in practice to verify processors in the post silicon stage for multiple architectures. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.