Tight RMR lower bounds for mutual exclusion and other problems

Hagit Attiya, Danny Hendler, Philipp Woelfel

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

56 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigate the remote memory references (RMRs) complexity of deterministic processes that communicate by reading and writing shared memory in asynchronous cache-coherent and distributed shared-memory multiprocessors. We define a class of algorithms that we call order encoding. By applying information-theoretic arguments, we prove that every order encoding algorithm, shared by n processes, has an execution that incurs ω(n log n) RMRs. From this we derive the same lower bound for the mutual exclusion, bounded counter and store/collect synchronization problems. The bounds we obtain for these problems are tight. It follows from the results of [10] that our lower bounds hold also for algorithms that can use comparison primitives and load-linked/store-conditional in addition to reads and writes. Our mutual exclusion lower bound proves a longstanding conjecture of Anderson and Kim.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSTOC'08
Subtitle of host publicationProceedings of the 2008 ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages217-226
Number of pages10
ISBN (Print)9781605580470
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2008
Event40th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC 2008 - Victoria, BC, Canada
Duration: 17 May 200820 May 2008

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing
ISSN (Print)0737-8017

Conference

Conference40th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC 2008
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityVictoria, BC
Period17/05/0820/05/08

Keywords

  • Bounded counter
  • Information theory
  • Lower bound techniques
  • Mutual exclusion
  • Shared-memory
  • Store/collect object

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Tight RMR lower bounds for mutual exclusion and other problems'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this