NGS: A Computing Environment Based on Hardware Transactional Memory

NGS：基于硬件事务内存的计算环境

• 批准号: 0305606
• 负责人: Charles Leiserson
• 金额: $ 40万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-08-01 至 2006-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0305606&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NGS; Computing; Environment; Based; Hardware

Abstract:Charles Leiserson, CNS-0305606Parallelism introduces more opportunities for unwanted nondeterminism in programs, making them hard to debug and impossible to write reliable regression tests for. Consequently, parallel computing has emerged as a niche technology suited only for software developers who are willing to cope with the complexities of concurrency, because performance is everything for them.In 1993, Herlihy and Moss{58} proposed transactional memory as an alternative mechanism for enforcing atomicity, since it allows the user to avoid many of the complications of locking. With transactional memory, a program can read and modify multiple, disparate memory locations as a single atomic operation, much as occurs within a database transaction. The trend has been towards software transactional memory(STM) {98,57,56}, the overhead of which discourages the use of transactions. The project contends that the "transactions everywhere" approach can simplify parallel programming dramatically and that hardware support can make overheads negligible. To test the project hypothesis, they plan to develop a hardware specification of "scalable" HTM with a software simulator, a linguistic framework for C-like languages, complier support "implicit" transactions, debuggers and other software-engineering tools, theoretical foundations for semantics and performance, and multithreaded applications that demonstrate the advantages of an HTM computing environment.

翻译后摘要：查尔斯Leiserson，CNS-0305606 fielism介绍了更多的机会，不必要的不确定性的程序，使他们难以调试，不可能编写可靠的回归测试。 因此，并行计算已经成为一种利基技术，只适合那些愿意科普并发复杂性的软件开发人员，因为性能对他们来说就是一切。在1993年，Herlihy和Moss{58}提出了事务内存作为强制原子性的替代机制，因为它允许用户避免锁定的许多复杂性。 有了事务内存，程序可以像单个原子操作一样读取和修改多个不同的内存位置，就像数据库事务中发生的那样。 趋势是软件事务存储器（STM）{98，57，56}，其开销阻碍了事务的使用。 该项目认为，“transactions everywhere”的方法可以大大简化并行编程，硬件支持可以使开销可以忽略不计。 为了测试项目假设，他们计划开发一个“可扩展”HTM的硬件规范，其中包括软件模拟器，类C语言的语言框架，编译器支持“隐式”事务，调试器和其他软件工程工具，语义和性能的理论基础，以及展示HTM计算环境优势的多线程应用程序。