Colocated with
ACM SIGMOD/PODS 2009

.: DaMoN Keynote Talk

Sweet Sixteen: How well is Transactional Memory Aging?

Maurice Herlihy (Brown University)

The term ``Transactional Memory'' was coined back in 1993, but even today, there is a vigorous debate about its merits. This debate sometimes generates more heat than light: terms are not always well-defined and criteria for making judgments are not always clear.

In this talk, I will try to impose some order on the conversation. TM itself can encompass hardware, software, speculative lock elision, and other mechanisms. The benefits sought encompass simpler implementations of highly-concurrent data structures, better software engineering for concurrent platforms, enhanced performance, and reduced power consumption. We will look at various terms in this cross-product and evaluate how we are doing. So far.