2^nd Workshop on the Theory of Transactional Memory (WTTM)

September 16, 2010, Cambridge (MA), USA - in conjunction with DISC 2010

The 2nd Workshop on the Theory of Transactional Memory is a forum to foster exchanges, discussions, and disseminations among researchers of speculative solutions for concurrent programming. The objective is to discuss new theoretical challenges and recent achievements in the context of transactional computing.

The transactional memory abstraction appears promising for democratizing concurrent programming. Its success lies in producing code that is extensible as atomicity is preserved under composition of transactions. This new abstraction raises several challenges such as the compliance of transactions with alternative synchronization techniques of legacy code and dedicated consistency models that favor concurrency.

As a major goal of the workshop is to explore new directions and approaches for reasoning about transactional memory, we especially encourage the submission of ongoing work, as well as position papers and case studies of existing verification projects.

The scope of the workshop includes, but is not limited to:

• concurrency improvements
• computational complexity
• concurrent programming languages
• consistency criteria
• concurrent algorithms
• transactional models
• progress properties
• verification of concurrent programs

How to participate?

We solicit submissions describing recent results and/or positions relevant to the theory of transactional memory to be presented and discussed (and defended) at the workshop. As a major goal of the workshop is to explore new directions and approaches for reasoning about transactional memory, we especially encourage the submission of ongoing work, as well as position papers and case studies of existing projects. Submissions should be in PDF and include title, author information, and a 1-2 page abstract, and will be lightly reviewed for appropriateness for the workshop. Please send them by July 30 to:

vincent.gramoli@epfl.ch and victor.luchangco@oracle.com

Accepted submissions will each be allotted around 10 minutes for presentation (exact time will depend on the final number of presentations). In addition, there will be significant time allotted for discussion.

Invited speakers

Ali-Reza Adl-Tabatabai Intel Labs, USA Rachid Guerraoui EPFL, Switzerland Mark Moir Sun Labs, Oracle, MA

Accepted papers

Annette Bieniusa (U. of Freiburg, Germany) On Relaxing Memory Consistency for Transactional Memory Yehuda Afek, Adam Morrison, Moran Tzafrir (Tel-Aviv U., Israel) View Transactions and the Relaxation of Consistency Checks in Software Transactional Memory Michael L. Scott and Luke Dalessandro (U. of Rochester, USA) On the Orthogonality of Speculation and Atomicity Sathya Peri (Indian Inst. of Technology Patna, India) K. Vidyasankar (Memorial U., St John's, Canada) Correctness of Concurrent Executions of Closed Nested Transactions in Transactional Memory Systems Justin Gottschlich, Jeremy G. Siek and Manish Vachharajani (U. of Colorado at Boulder, USA) Proving Conflict Serializability for Full Invalidation Ranjeet Kumar and K. Vidyasankar (Memorial U. of Newfoundland, Canada) HParSTM: A Hierarchy-based STM Protocol for Supporting Nested Parallelism Bo Zhang and Binoy Ravindran (ECE Dept. Viriginia Tech, USA) Supporting Transactional Memory in Distributed Systems based on the Data-Flow Model Simon Doherty, Victor Luchangco and Mark Moir (Sun Labs, Oracle, USA) Towards Formal Specification and Verification of Transactional Memory: Machine-Checked Proofs Maurice Herlihy (Brown U., USA) and Eric Koskinen (U. of Cambridge, UK) Simplified Synchronization through Optimistic Linearizability Vincent Gramoli, Rachid Guerraoui and Mihai Letia (EPFL, Switzerland) Composition vs Concurrency Trek Palmer and Eliot Moss (U. of Massachussetts Amherst, USA) Automating Proofs of Coarse-Transaction Properties of Data Abstractions Gokarna Sharma and Costas Busch (Louisiana State U., USA) Improving the Performance Competitive Ratios of Transactional Memory Contention Managers Stephan Diestelhorst, Michael Hohmuth and Martin Pohlack (AMD, Germany) Sane Semantics of Best Effort Harware Transactional Memory Sean White and Michael Spear (Lehigh U., USA) On Reconciling Hardware Atomicity, Memory Models, and __tm_waiver Junwhan Kim and Binoy Ravindran (ECE Dept. Virigina Tech, USA) The Semantics of Progress and Concurrency in Distributed Transactional Memory Systems

Program

Registration fee does not cover lunch.

Time	Authors	Paper	Slides
8h30	Panel
	Michael L. Scott (Moderator)	Theory for Transactional Memory	pdf
	Ali-Reza Adl-Tabatabai
	Rachid Guerraoui	Disseminating TMs	pdf
	Mark Moir
10h	Coffee break
10h20	Concurrency
	A. Bieniusa	On Relaxing Memory Consistency for Transactional Memory	pdf
	Y. Afek, A. Morrison, M. Tzafrir	View Transactions and the Relaxation of Consistency Checks in Software Transactional Memory	pdf
	V. Gramoli, R. Guerraoui, M. Letia	Composition vs. Concurrency	pdf
	Discussion
11h10	Nesting
	S. Peri, K. Vidyasankar	Correctness of Concurrent Executions of Closed Nested Transactions in Transactional Memory Systems	pdf
	R. Kumar, K. Vidyasankar	ParSTM: A Hierarchy-based STM Protocol for Supporting Nested Parallelism
	M. Spear	Rethinking composition	pdf
	Discussion
11h50	Lunch break
13h40	Correctness
	T. Palmer, E. Moss	Automating Proofs of Coarse-Transaction Properties of Data Abstractions	pdf
	J. Gottschlich, J.G. Siek, M. Vachharajani	Proving Conflict Serializability for Full Invalidation	pdf
	S. Doherty, V. Luchangco, M. Moir	Towards Formal Specification and Verification of Transactional Memory: Machine-Checked Proofs	pdf
	Discussion
14h30	Message Passing Models
	B. Zhang, B. Ravindran	Supporting Transactional Memory in Distributed Systems based on the Data-Flow Model	pdf
	M. Herlihy, E. Koskinen	Simplified Synchronization through Optimistic Linearizability	pdf
	Discussion
15h10	Coffee break
15h30	Memory Models
	M.L. Scott, L. Dalessandro	On the Orthogonality of Speculation and Atomicity	pdf
	S. White, M. Spear	On Reconciling Hardware Atomicity, Memory Models, and __tm_waiver	pdf
	S. Diestelhorst, M. Hohmuth, M. Pohlack	Sane Semantics of Best Effort Harware Transactional Memory	pdf
	Discussion
16h20	Progress
	G. Sharma, C. Busch	Improving the Performance Competitive Ratios of Transactional Memory Contention Managers	pdf
	J. Kim, B. Ravindran	The Semantics of Progress and Concurrency in Distributed Transactional Memory Systems	pdf
	Discussion

Important dates

Submission deadline: 30 July 2010 Acceptance notification: 10 August 2010 Workshop date: 16 September 2010

Organization

last update: August 13th, 2010