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On Validity of Program Transformations in the Java Memory Model

  • Conference paper
ECOOP 2008 – Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 5142))

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Abstract

We analyse the validity of several common program transformations in multi-threaded Java, as defined by the Memory Model section of the Java Language Specification. The main design goal of the Java Memory Model (JMM) was to allow as many optimisations as possible. However, we find that commonly used optimisations, such as common subexpression elimination, can introduce new behaviours and so are invalid for Java. In this paper, we describe several kinds of transformations and explain the problems with a number of counterexamples. More positively, we also examine some valid transformations, and prove their validity. Our study contributes to the understanding of the JMM, and has the practical impact of revealing some cases where the Sun Hotspot JVM does not comply with the Java Memory Model.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. LFCS, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh,  

    Jaroslav Ševčík & David Aspinall

Authors
  1. Jaroslav Ševčík
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  2. David Aspinall
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Jan Vitek

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Ševčík, J., Aspinall, D. (2008). On Validity of Program Transformations in the Java Memory Model. In: Vitek, J. (eds) ECOOP 2008 – Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5142. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70592-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70592-5_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-70591-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-70592-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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