Sadegh Dalvandi
Skip Abstract Section
Abstract
Transactional memory (TM) is an intensively studied synchronisation paradigm with many proposed implementations in software and hardware, and combinations thereof. However, TM under relaxed memory, e.g., C11 (the 2011 C/C++ standard) is still poorly understood, lacking rigorous foundations that support verifiable implementations. This paper addresses this gap by developing TMS2-ra, a relaxed operational TM specification. We integrate TMS2-ra with RC11 (the repaired C11 memory model that disallows load-buffering) to provide a formal semantics for TM libraries and their clients. We develop a logic, TARO, for verifying client programs that use TMS2-ra for synchronisation. We also show how TMS2-ra can be implemented by a C11 library, TML-ra, that uses relaxed and release-acquire atomics, yet guarantees the synchronisation properties required by TMS2-ra. We benchmark TML-ra and show that it outperforms its sequentially consistent counterpart in the STAMP benchmarks. Finally, we use a simulation-based verification technique to prove correctness of TML-ra. Our entire development is supported by the Isabelle/HOL proof assistant.
- P. A. Abdulla, J. Arora, M. F. Atig, and S. N. Krishna. 2019. Verification of programs under the release-acquire semantics. In PLDI, K. S. McKinley and K. Fisher (Eds.). ACM, 1117–1132. https://doi.org/10.1145/3314221.3314649
Google Scholar
Digital Library
- J. Alglave and P. Cousot. 2017. Ogre and Pythia: an invariance proof method for weak consistency models. In POPL, G. Castagna and A. D. Gordon (Eds.). ACM, 3–18. isbn:978-1-4503-4660-3
Google Scholar
- J. Alglave, L. Maranget, and M. Tautschnig. 2014. Herding Cats: Modelling, Simulation, Testing, and Data Mining for Weak Memory. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst., 36, 2 (2014), 7:1–7:74.
Google ScholarDigital Library
- A. Armstrong and B. Dongol. 2017. Modularising Opacity Verification for Hybrid Transactional Memory. In FORTE, A. Bouajjani and A. Silva (Eds.) (LNCS, Vol. 10321). Springer, 33–49.
Google Scholar
- A. Armstrong, B. Dongol, and S. Doherty. 2017. Proving Opacity via Linearizability: A Sound and Complete Method. In FORTE, A. Bouajjani and A. Silva (Eds.) (LNCS, Vol. 10321). Springer, 50–66.
Google Scholar
- G. Assa, H. Meir, G. Golan-Gueta, I. Keidar, and A. Spiegelman. 2020. Nesting and composition in transactional data structure libraries. In PPoPP ’20, R. Gupta and X. Shen (Eds.). ACM, 405–406. https://doi.org/10.1145/3332466.3374514
Google ScholarDigital Library
- G. Assa, H. Meir, G. Golan-Gueta, I. Keidar, and A. Spiegelman. 2021. Using Nesting to Push the Limits of Transactional Data Structure Libraries. In OPODIS, Q. Bramas, V. Gramoli, and A. Milani (Eds.) (LIPIcs, Vol. 217). Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, 30:1–30:17. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2021.30
Google ScholarCross Ref
- H. Attiya, A. Gotsman, S. Hans, and N. Rinetzky. 2018. Characterizing Transactional Memory Consistency Conditions Using Observational Refinement. J. ACM, 65, 1 (2018), 2:1–2:44.
Google Scholar
- M. Batty, A. F. Donaldson, and J. Wickerson. 2016. Overhauling SC atomics in C11 and OpenCL. In POPL. ACM, 634–648.
Google Scholar
- M. Batty, S. Owens, S. Sarkar, P. Sewell, and T. Weber. 2011. Mathematizing C++ concurrency. In POPL, T. Ball and M. Sagiv (Eds.). ACM, 55–66. isbn:978-1-4503-0490-0
Google Scholar
- S. M. Beillahi, A. Bouajjani, and C. Enea. 2021. Checking Robustness Between Weak Transactional Consistency Models. In ESOP, N. Yoshida (Ed.) (LNCS, Vol. 12648). Springer, 87–117. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72019-3_4
Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. M. Beillahi, A. Bouajjani, and C. Enea. 2021. Robustness Against Transactional Causal Consistency. Log. Methods Comput. Sci., 17, 1 (2021), https://lmcs.episciences.org/7149
Google Scholar
- E. Vafeiadi Bila, B. Dongol, O. Lahav, A. Raad, and J. Wickerson. 2022. View-Based Owicki-Gries Reasoning for Persistent x86-TSO. In ESOP, I. Sergey (Ed.) (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 13240). Springer, 234–261. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99336-8_9
Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. Böhme and T. Nipkow. 2010. Sledgehammer: Judgement Day. In IJCAR (LNCS, Vol. 6173). Springer, 107–121.
Google Scholar
- N. G. Bronson, J. Casper, H. Chafi, and K. Olukotun. 2010. Transactional predication: high-performance concurrent sets and maps for STM. In PODC, A. W. Richa and R. Guerraoui (Eds.). ACM, 6–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/1835698.1835703
Google ScholarDigital Library
- N. Chong, T. Sorensen, and J. Wickerson. 2018. The semantics of transactions and weak memory in x86, Power, ARM, and C++. In PLDI, J. S. Foster and D. Grossman (Eds.). ACM, 211–225. https://doi.org/10.1145/3192366.3192373
Google ScholarDigital Library
- cppreference.com. 2022. std::atomic_compare_exchange. https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/atomic/atomic_compare_exchange Accessed 18 July, 2022
Google Scholar
- L. Dalessandro, D. Dice, M. L. Scott, N. Shavit, and M. F. Spear. 2010. Transactional Mutex Locks. In Euro-Par (2) (LNCS, Vol. 6272). Springer, 2–13.
Google Scholar
- S. Dalvandi, S. Doherty, B. Dongol, and H. Wehrheim. 2020. Owicki-Gries Reasoning for C11 RAR. In ECOOP, R. Hirschfeld and T. Pape (Eds.) (LIPIcs, Vol. 166). Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, 11:1–11:26. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2020.11
Google ScholarCross Ref
- S. Dalvandi, S. Doherty, B. Dongol, and H. Wehrheim. 2020. Owicki-Gries Reasoning for C11 RAR (Artifact). Dagstuhl Artifacts Ser., 6, 2 (2020), 15:1–15:2. https://doi.org/10.4230/DARTS.6.2.15
Google ScholarCross Ref
- S. Dalvandi and B. Dongol. 2021. Verifying C11-style weak memory libraries. In PPoPP, J. Lee and E. Petrank (Eds.). ACM, 451–453. https://doi.org/10.1145/3437801.3441619
Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. Dalvandi and B. Dongol. 2022. Implementing and Verifying Release-Acquire Transactional Memory (Artifact). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6899919
Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. Dalvandi and B. Dongol. 2022. Implementing and Verifying Release-Acquire Transactional Memory (Extended Version). https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2208.00315
Google Scholar
- S. Dalvandi, B. Dongol, S. Doherty, and H. Wehrheim. 2022. Integrating Owicki-Gries for C11-Style Memory Models into Isabelle/HOL. J. Autom. Reason., 66, 1 (2022), 141–171. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-021-09610-2
Google ScholarDigital Library
- H.-H. Dang, J. Jung, J. Choi, D.-T. Nguyen, W. Mansky, J. Kang, and D. Dreyer. 2022. Compass: strong and compositional library specifications in relaxed memory separation logic. In PLDI, R. Jhala and I. Dillig (Eds.). ACM, 792–808. https://doi.org/10.1145/3519939.3523451
Google ScholarDigital Library
- W. P. de Roever and K. Engelhardt. 1998. Data Refinement: Model-oriented Proof Theories and their Comparison (Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science, Vol. 46). Cambridge University Press. isbn:0-521-64170-5
Google ScholarCross Ref
- J. Derrick, S. Doherty, B. Dongol, G. Schellhorn, O. Travkin, and H. Wehrheim. 2018. Mechanized proofs of opacity: a comparison of two techniques. Formal Aspects Comput., 30, 5 (2018), 597–625. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00165-017-0433-3
Google ScholarDigital Library
- D. Dice, O. Shalev, and N. Shavit. 2006. Transactional Locking II. In DISC, S. Dolev (Ed.) (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 4167). Springer, 194–208. https://doi.org/10.1007/11864219_14
Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. Doherty, B. Dongol, J. Derrick, G. Schellhorn, and H. Wehrheim. 2016. Proving Opacity of a Pessimistic STM. In OPODIS, P. Fatourou, E. Jiménez, and F. Pedone (Eds.) (LIPIcs, Vol. 70). Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik, 35:1–35:17.
Google Scholar
- S. Doherty, B. Dongol, H. Wehrheim, and J. Derrick. 2018. Making Linearizability Compositional for Partially Ordered Executions. In iFM, C. A. Furia and K. Winter (Eds.) (LNCS, Vol. 11023). Springer, 110–129. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98938-9_7
Google ScholarCross Ref
- S. Doherty, B. Dongol, H. Wehrheim, and J. Derrick. 2019. Verifying C11 programs operationally. In PPoPP, Jeffrey K. Hollingsworth and Idit Keidar (Eds.). ACM, 355–365. isbn:978-1-4503-6225-2
Google Scholar
- S. Doherty, L. Groves, V. Luchangco, and M. Moir. 2013. Towards formally specifying and verifying transactional memory. Formal Asp. Comput., 25, 5 (2013), 769–799.
Google ScholarDigital Library
- M. Doko and V. Vafeiadis. 2017. Tackling Real-Life Relaxed Concurrency with FSL++. In ESOP. 448–475.
Google Scholar
- S. Dolan, KC Sivaramakrishnan, and A. Madhavapeddy. 2018. Bounding Data Races in Space and Time. In PLDI (PLDI 2018). ACM, New York, NY, USA. 242–255. isbn:978-1-4503-5698-5
Google Scholar
- B. Dongol and L. Groves. 2016. Contextual Trace Refinement for Concurrent Objects: Safety and Progress. In ICFEM, K. Ogata, M. Lawford, and S. Liu (Eds.) (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 10009). 261–278. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47846-3_17
Google ScholarCross Ref
- B. Dongol, R. Jagadeesan, and J. Riely. 2018. Transactions in relaxed memory architectures. PACMPL, 2, POPL (2018), 18:1–18:29.
Google Scholar
- B. Dongol, R. Jagadeesan, and J. Riely. 2019. Modular transactions: bounding mixed races in space and time. In PPoPP, J. K. Hollingsworth and I. Keidar (Eds.). ACM, 82–93. https://doi.org/10.1145/3293883.3295708
Google ScholarDigital Library
- B. Dongol, R. Jagadeesan, J. Riely, and A. Armstrong. 2018. On abstraction and compositionality for weak-memory linearisability. In VMCAI (LNCS, Vol. 10747). Springer, 183–204.
Google Scholar
- M. Emmi and C. Enea. 2019. Weak-consistency specification via visibility relaxation. Proc. ACM Program. Lang., 3, POPL (2019), 60:1–60:28. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290373
Google ScholarDigital Library
- A. Gotsman and H. Yang. 2011. Liveness-Preserving Atomicity Abstraction. In ICALP, L. Aceto, M. Henzinger, and J. Sgall (Eds.) (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 6756). Springer, 453–465. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22012-8_36
Google ScholarCross Ref
- R. Guerraoui and M. Kapalka. 2010. Principles of Transactional Memory. Morgan & Claypool Publishers.
Google Scholar
- M. He, V. Vafeiadis, S. Qin, and J. F. Ferreira. 2016. Reasoning about Fences and Relaxed Atomics. In PDP. IEEE Computer Society, 520–527. isbn:978-1-4673-8776-7
Google Scholar
- M. Herlihy and J. E. B. Moss. 1993. Transactional Memory: Architectural Support for Lock-Free Data Structures. In ISCA, A. J. Smith (Ed.). ACM, 289–300.
Google Scholar
- M. Herlihy and J. M. Wing. 1990. Linearizability: A Correctness Condition for Concurrent Objects. ACM TOPLAS, 12, 3 (1990), 463–492.
Google Scholar
- R. Jagadeesan, A. Jeffrey, and J. Riely. 2020. Pomsets with preconditions: a simple model of relaxed memory. Proc. ACM Program. Lang., 4, OOPSLA (2020), 194:1–194:30. https://doi.org/10.1145/3428262
Google ScholarDigital Library
- J.-O. Kaiser, H.-H. Dang, D. D., O. Lahav, and V. Vafeiadis. 2017. Strong Logic for Weak Memory: Reasoning About Release-Acquire Consistency in Iris. In ECOOP, P. Müller (Ed.) (LIPIcs, Vol. 74). Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik, 17:1–17:29. isbn:978-3-95977-035-4
Google Scholar
- J. Kang, C.-K. Hur, O. Lahav, V. Vafeiadis, and D. Dreyer. 2017. A promising semantics for relaxed-memory concurrency. In POPL. ACM, 175–189.
Google Scholar
- A. Khyzha and O. Lahav. 2022. Abstraction for Crash-Resilient Objects. In ESOP, Ilya Sergey (Ed.) (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 13240). Springer, 262–289. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99336-8_10
Google ScholarDigital Library
- M. Kokologiannakis, A. Raad, and V. Vafeiadis. 2019. Model checking for weakly consistent libraries. In PLDI, K. S. McKinley and K. Fisher (Eds.). ACM, 96–110. https://doi.org/10.1145/3314221.3314609
Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. Krishna, M. Emmi, C. Enea, and D. Jovanovic. 2020. Verifying Visibility-Based Weak Consistency. In ESOP, P. Müller (Ed.) (LNCS, Vol. 12075). Springer, 280–307. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44914-8_11
Google ScholarDigital Library
- O. Lahav, E. Namakonov, J. Oberhauser, A. Podkopaev, and V. Vafeiadis. 2021. Making weak memory models fair. Proc. ACM Program. Lang., 5, OOPSLA (2021), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1145/3485475
Google ScholarDigital Library
- O. Lahav and V. Vafeiadis. 2015. Owicki-Gries Reasoning for Weak Memory Models. In ICALP, M. M. Halldórsson, K. Iwama, N. Kobayashi, and B. Speckmann (Eds.) (LNCS, Vol. 9135). Springer, 311–323. isbn:978-3-662-47665-9
Google Scholar
- O. Lahav, V. Vafeiadis, J. Kang, C.-K. Hur, and D. Dreyer. 2017. Repairing sequential consistency in C/C++11. In PLDI. ACM, 618–632.
Google Scholar
- L. Lamport. 1979. How to Make a Multiprocessor Computer That Correctly Executes Multiprocess Programs. IEEE Trans. Computers, 28, 9 (1979), 690–691.
Google ScholarDigital Library
- S.-H. Lee, M. Cho, A. Podkopaev, S. Chakraborty, C.-K. Hur, O. Lahav, and V. Vafeiadis. 2020. Promising 2.0: global optimizations in relaxed memory concurrency. In PLDI, A. F. Donaldson and E. Torlak (Eds.). ACM, 362–376. https://doi.org/10.1145/3385412.3386010
Google ScholarDigital Library
- M. Lesani, V. Luchangco, and M. Moir. 2012. Putting Opacity in Its Place. In WTTM.
Google Scholar
- M. Lesani, L. Xia, A. Kaseorg, C. J. Bell, A. Chlipala, B. C. Pierce, and S. Zdancewic. 2022. C4: verified transactional objects. Proc. ACM Program. Lang., 6, OOPSLA (2022), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1145/3527324
Google ScholarDigital Library
- N. A. Lynch. 1996. Distributed Algorithms. Morgan Kaufmann. isbn:1-55860-348-4
Google Scholar
- R. Margalit and O. Lahav. 2021. Verifying Observational Robustness against a C11-Style Memory Model. Proc. ACM Program. Lang., 5, POPL (2021), Article 4, Jan., 33 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3434285
Google ScholarDigital Library
- A. Matveev and N. Shavit. 2015. Reduced Hardware NOrec: A Safe and Scalable Hybrid Transactional Memory. In ASPLOS, Ö. Ö., K. Ebcioglu, and S. Dwarkadas (Eds.). ACM, 59–71. https://doi.org/10.1145/2694344.2694393
Google ScholarDigital Library
- C. C. Minh, J. Chung, C. Kozyrakis, and K. Olukotun. 2008. STAMP: Stanford Transactional Applications for Multi-Processing. In IISWC, D. Christie, A. Lee, O. Mutlu, and B. G. Zorn (Eds.). IEEE Computer Society, 35–46. https://doi.org/10.1109/IISWC.2008.4636089
Google ScholarCross Ref
- S. S. Owicki and D. Gries. 1976. An Axiomatic Proof Technique for Parallel Programs I. Acta Inf., 6 (1976), 319–340.
Google Scholar
- M. Paviotti, S. Cooksey, A. Paradis, D. Wright, S. Owens, and M. Batty. 2020. Modular Relaxed Dependencies in Weak Memory Concurrency. In ESOP, P. Müller (Ed.) (LNCS, Vol. 12075). Springer, 599–625. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44914-8_22
Google ScholarDigital Library
- A. Podkopaev, I. Sergey, and A. Nanevski. 2016. Operational Aspects of C/C++ Concurrency. CoRR, abs/1606.01400 (2016), arxiv:1606.01400.
Google Scholar
- A. Raad, M. Doko, L. Rozic, O. Lahav, and V. Vafeiadis. 2019. On library correctness under weak memory consistency: specifying and verifying concurrent libraries under declarative consistency models. Proc. ACM Program. Lang., 3, POPL (2019), 68:1–68:31. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290381
Google ScholarDigital Library
- A. Raad, O. Lahav, and V. Vafeiadis. 2018. On Parallel Snapshot Isolation and Release/Acquire Consistency. In ESOP, A. Ahmed (Ed.) (LNCS, Vol. 10801). Springer, 940–967. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89884-1_33
Google ScholarCross Ref
- A. Raad, O. Lahav, and V. Vafeiadis. 2019. On the Semantics of Snapshot Isolation. In VMCAI, C. Enea and R. Piskac (Eds.) (LNCS, Vol. 11388). Springer, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11245-5_1
Google ScholarCross Ref
- M. Rodriguez and M. F. Spear. 2020. Brief Announcement: On Implementing Software Transactional Memory in the C++ Memory Model. In PODC, Y. Emek and C. Cachin (Eds.). ACM, 224–226. https://doi.org/10.1145/3382734.3405746
Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. Scargall. 2020. Programming Persistent Memory: A Comprehensive Guide for Developers. APress. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4932-1_8
Google ScholarCross Ref
- G. Sela, M. Herlihy, and E. Petrank. 2021. Brief Announcement: Linearizability: A Typo. In PODC, A. Miller, K. Censor-Hillel, and J. H. Korhonen (Eds.). ACM, 561–564. https://doi.org/10.1145/3465084.3467944
Google ScholarDigital Library
- N. Shavit and D. Touitou. 1997. Software Transactional Memory. Distributed Computing, 10, 2 (1997), 99–116.
Google ScholarCross Ref
- M. Spear, H. Boehm, V. Luchangco, M. L. Scott, and M. Wong. 2020. Transactional Memory Lite Support in C++. isocpp.
Google Scholar
- A. J. Summers and P. Müller. 2018. Automating Deductive Verification for Weak-Memory Programs. In TACAS, D. Beyer and M. Huisman (Eds.) (LNCS, Vol. 10805). Springer, 190–209. isbn:978-3-319-89959-6
Google Scholar
- K. Svendsen, J. Pichon-Pharabod, M. Doko, O. Lahav, and V. Vafeiadis. 2018. A Separation Logic for a Promising Semantics. In ESOP, A. Ahmed (Ed.) (LNCS, Vol. 10801). Springer, 357–384. isbn:978-3-319-89883-4
Google Scholar
- J. Tassarotti, D. Dreyer, and V. Vafeiadis. 2015. Verifying read-copy-update in a logic for weak memory. In PLDI, D. Grove and S. Blackburn (Eds.). ACM, 110–120. https://doi.org/10.1145/2737924.2737992
Google ScholarDigital Library
- A. Turon, V. Vafeiadis, and D. Dreyer. 2014. GPS: navigating weak memory with ghosts, protocols, and separation. In OOPSLA, A. P. Black and T. D. Millstein (Eds.). ACM, 691–707. isbn:978-1-4503-2585-1
Google Scholar
- V. Vafeiadis and C. Narayan. 2013. Relaxed separation logic: A program logic for C11 concurrency. In OOPSLA. 867–884.
Google Scholar
- D. Wright, M. Batty, and B. Dongol. 2021. Owicki-Gries Reasoning for C11 Programs with Relaxed Dependencies. 13047 (2021), 237–254. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90870-6_13
Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. Xiong, A. Cerone, A. Raad, and P. Gardner. 2020. Data Consistency in Transactional Storage Systems: A Centralised Semantics. In ECOOP, R. Hirschfeld and T. Pape (Eds.) (LIPIcs, Vol. 166). Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, 21:1–21:31. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2020.21
Google ScholarCross Ref
- P. Zardoshti, T. Zhou, P. Balaji, M. L. Scott, and M. F. Spear. 2019. Simplifying Transactional Memory Support in C++. ACM Trans. Archit. Code Optim., 16, 3 (2019), 25:1–25:24. https://doi.org/10.1145/3328796
Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Implementing and verifying release-acquire transactional memory in C11
Recommendations
Verifying Read-Copy Update Under RC11
Software Engineering and Formal MethodsAbstractRead-Copy Update (RCU) is a key lock-free synchronisation mechanism that is used extensively in the Linux kernel. One use of RCU is safe memory reclamation in languages such as C/C++ that do not support garbage collection. Correctness of RCU is, ...
Verifying C11-style weak memory libraries
PPoPP '21: Proceedings of the 26th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel ProgrammingDeductive verification of concurrent programs under weak memory has thus far been limited to simple programs over a monolithic state space. For scalabiility, we also require modular techniques with verifiable library abstractions. We address this ...
Towards formally specifying and verifying transactional memory
AbstractOver the last decade, great progress has been made in developing practical transactional memory (TM) implementations, but relatively little attention has been paid to precisely specifying what it means for them to be correct, or formally proving ...
Comments