Multiprocessors and Thread-Level Parallelism

Models of Memory Consistency

“I'm radically increasing Sun's focus on storage today”

Sun President Jonathan Schwartz (Oct, 2007)

What behavior should we expect?

Sequential consistency model

Data-race-free programs

Synchronization mechanism are extremely tricky

The programmer's view

W->R: total store ordering / processor consistency

W->W: partial store order

R->W / R->R: weak ordering, PowerPC, release consistency

Relaxed Consistency Models

Thank you!

Author: Prof. Sergio Takeo, Marcelo Arbore.

Bibliography: Patterson, D. A.; Hennessy, J. L. Computer Architecture: A quantitative Approach, 4th Ed. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

“I'm radically increasing Sun's focus on storage today”

Sun President Jonathan Schwartz (Oct, 2007)