An Intuitive and Efficient Semantics for Concurrent Programming Languages

March 15, 2011
Daniel Marino | UC Los Angeles

Programming concurrent systems is notoriously subtle and error-prone. This is hardly surprising considering that mainstream memory models, which form the basis of concurrent languages’ semantics, are confusing and provide only weak memory-ordering guarantees. We tolerate such weak memory models in order to facilitate efficient compiler and hardware implementations. I will present a novel, holistic approach that gives strong memory model guarantees without sacrificing performance. I will first discuss DRFx, a memory model which relies on cooperation between the compiler and the hardware to provide straightforward guarantees to the programmer while still permitting most common optimizations. This is achieved through an extremely lightweight form of dynamic data race detection and the introduction of a memory model exception. I will also present more recent research which suggests that an efficient implementation of end-to-end sequential consistency (a strong, intuitive memory model) may be within reach.

Speaker Details

Dan Marino is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at UC Los Angeles. His research strives to give programmers of concurrent systems strong correctness guarantees while maintaining high performance. He completed his B.A. in Computer Science and Mathematics at UC Berkeley in 1999. He worked designing and building custom business software for several years before returning to pursue graduate studies at UCLA in 2005. He received his M.S. in Computer Science in 2007 and will complete his Ph.D. in June 2011. In 2009, Dan was honored with the Symantec Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award. He also completed three industry research internships during his graduate studies, two at Microsoft Research Redmond and one at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center.