CSR: Small: Making Software Transactional Memory More than a Research Toy

CSR：小：让软件事务内存不仅仅是一个研究玩具

• 批准号: 1218695
• 负责人: Michael Bond
• 金额: $ 40万
• 依托单位: Ohio State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1218695&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CSR; Small; Making; Software; Transactional

Now that computer technology appears to have reached the limit of Dennard scaling (increasing clock rates), software must become more parallel, to scale with hardware that provides more instead of faster cores. However, writing correct, scalable shared-memory concurrent programs is notoriously difficult. Transactional memory (TM) offers potential improvements over conventional shared-memory systems in programmability, reliability, and scalability. However, it has not lived up to its initial promise, primarily because no one has shown how to make it practical. Hardware manufacturers are reluctant to build hardware TM (HTM) into already-complex cache and memory subsystems, and software TM (STM) suffers from poor performance and weak semantics. This project seeks to advance the state of the art dramatically by investigating new research directions for making STM truly practical, by achieving high performance with strong semantics. The project tackles STM's key cost in existing work -- detecting and handling conflicting accesses -- using a novel mechanism that avoids synchronization at non-conflicting accesses.Direct beneficial impacts of making widely available practical STM support include the ability to produce more reliable and scalable software systems, leading to advances in software for safety- and mission-critical systems. Widespread use of STM can help spur commercial development of hardware support for hybrid hardware-software TM, which requires practical STM support. The investigator's engagement with industrial researchers provides an avenue to enhance dissemination. Public distribution of STM implementations produced by this project provides a basis for further research and development. Several educational and outreach activities, including course projects, enhanced core course material, interactive presentations for a summer bridge program targeting minority undergraduate engineering majors, and recruiting events for prospective minority graduate students, aim to train a diverse group of programmers and researchers in developing future reliable, scalable software systems.

现在，计算机技术似乎已经达到了 Dennard 缩放（增加时钟速率）的极限，软件必须变得更加并行，以便与提供更多而不是更快内核的硬件一起扩展。 然而，编写正确的、可扩展的共享内存并发程序是出了名的困难。事务内存 (TM) 在可编程性、可靠性和可扩展性方面比传统共享内存系统具有潜在的改进。 然而，它并没有兑现最初的承诺，主要是因为没有人展示如何使其实用。硬件制造商不愿意将硬件TM（HTM）构建到已经复杂的缓存和内存子系统中，而软件TM（STM）则遭受性能差和语义弱的困扰。该项目旨在通过研究新的研究方向，通过实现具有强大语义的高性能，使 STM 真正实用，从而显着提高现有技术水平。该项目解决了 STM 在现有工作中的关键成本——检测和处理冲突访问——使用一种避免非冲突访问同步的新颖机制。广泛提供实用​​ STM 支持的直接有益影响包括能够生成更可靠和可扩展的软件系统，从而导致安全和关键任务系统软件的进步。 STM的广泛使用有助于刺激混合硬件-软件TM的硬件支持的商业开发，这需要实际的STM支持。研究者与工业研究人员的接触提供了加强传播的途径。 该项目产生的 STM 实现的公开分发为进一步的研究和开发奠定了基础。 多项教育和外展活动，包括课程项目、强化核心课程材料、针对少数族裔本科工程专业的夏季桥梁课程的互动演示，以及针对未来少数族裔研究生的招募活动，旨在培训多元化的程序员和研究人员群体，以开发未来可靠、可扩展的软件系统。