Hardware support for unbounded transactional memory

In this thesis, I propose a design for hardware transactional memory where the transaction size is not bounded by a specialized hardware buffer such as a cache. I describe an unbounded transactional memory system called UTM (unbounded transactional memory) that exploits the perceived common case where transactions are small but still supports transactions of arbitrary size. As in previous hardware transactional memory systems, UTM uses the cache to store speculative state and uses the cache coherency protocol to detect conflicting transactions. Unlike previous hardware systems, UTM allows the speculative state to overflow from the cache into main memory, thereby allowing the transaction to grow beyond the size limitation of the cache. The clean semantics of UTM allow nested transaction support, nontransactional instructions, immediate aborts, a processor snapshot, and context-switching support; all features not found in previous hardware transactional systems. UTM was implemented in a detailed simulator, and experimental results show that it can be integrated with existing hardware straightforwardly while still performing better than conventional synchronization techniques.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Lie, Sean, 1980-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Krste Asanovic.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/28440

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/28440