Achieving Starvation-Freedom in Multi-Version Transactional Memory Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new starvation-free multi-version STM algorithm that improves transaction success rates in concurrent multi-core systems, applicable with both bounded and unbounded versioning.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel starvation-free algorithm for multi-version STM, addressing a key limitation of existing systems and enhancing performance with theoretical and practical validation.

Findings

The algorithm guarantees starvation freedom for transactions.

Performance surpasses existing state-of-the-art STMs.

Applicable to both bounded and unbounded versioning scenarios.

Abstract

Software Transactional Memory systems (STMs) have garnered significant interest as an elegant alternative for addressing synchronization and concurrency issues with multi-threaded programming in multi-core systems. Client programs use STMs by issuing transactions. STM ensures that transaction either commits or aborts. A transaction aborted due to conflicts is typically re-issued with the expectation that it will complete successfully in a subsequent incarnation. However, many existing STMs fail to provide starvation freedom, i.e., in these systems, it is possible that concurrency conflicts may prevent an incarnated transaction from committing. To overcome this limitation, we systematically derive a novel starvation free algorithm for multi-version STM. Our algorithm can be used either with the case where the number of versions is unbounded and garbage collection is used or where only the latest K versions are maintained, KSFTM. We have demonstrated that our proposed algorithm performs better than existing state-of-the-art STMs.