Relaxed memory models for multiprocessors (or, all what you did not want to know about your multiprocessor)

September 23, 2008

Francesco Zappa Nardelli


Relaxed memory models for multiprocessors (or, all what you did not want to know about your multiprocessor)

Time:   11:00am
Location:   Amphitheatre H-1005

For performance reasons, multiprocessors may reorder memory accesses in various subtle ways: your shared-memory concurrent program might exhibit behaviours that cannot be obtained as interleaving of its memory accesses. In these lectures I will introduce relaxed memory models for multiprocessors; describe, both informally and formally, a model for Intel 64/IA-32 processors; and compare this with models for other architectures.