Systems and methods for supporting software transactional memory using inconsistency-aware compilers and libraries

Abstract

Systems and methods may reduce overhead associated with read set consistency validation in software transactional memory implementations. These systems and methods may employ an inconsistency-aware compiler-library technique, in which an inconsistency-aware compiler communicates to various inconsistency-aware library functions knowledge about whether a given transaction has read consistent values to date. The inconsistency-aware library functions may exploit this information to avoid the need to validate the transaction, or portions thereof. If read set values are known to be consistent prior to the function call, the compiler may pass a parameter value to the function indicating as much. Otherwise, it may pass a value indicating that the read set values may be inconsistent. An inconsistency-aware function may determine that it will not perform a dangerous action, even though its parameters may not be consistent. Otherwise, the inconsistency-aware function may invoke a validation operation, or may perform other error avoidance operations.