Reactive Universal Constructions for Non-blocking Synchronization

04.09.2006

Foredragsholdere
Phuong Hoai Ha

Tid: Mandag 4. september 2006, kl 14:15 - 15:00
Sted: Lille auditorium, Realfagsbygget, UiTø

Tittel: " Reactive Universal Constructions for Non-blocking Synchronization "
Foredragsholder: Dr. Phuong Hoai Ha, Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gøteborg, Sweeden

Abstract:
Performance of parallel systems comes not only from concurrently running more processing hardware but also from efficiently synchronizing processors/processes to maximize parallelism. Since the conventional synchronization method, which is mutual exclusion, contains inevitable drawbacks like the risk of causing deadlock situations due to its blocking mechanism, the concept of *non-blocking* synchronization is emerging as a promising alternative. Non-blocking synchronization protocols allow concurrent processes to access shared objects simultaneously while guaranteeing the objects semantics. Since these protocols do not involve blocking, they avoid the drawbacks of mutual exclusion and thus can achieve better performance. However, implementing non-blocking synchronization protocols is notoriously sophisticated. To alleviate the burden, substantial research effort has been devoted to develop *universal constructions*, which eliminate the limit of hardware synchronization primitives that only ensures *atomic* accesses to a word-sized variable.

In this talk, I will present our new efficient universal constructions that automatically *react* to contention variation, guaranteeing good performance in a wide range of system conditions. To deal with certainty like contention in distributed systems, our reactive universal constructions has successfully incorporated advanced online algorithmic techniques into non-blocking synchronization. We have evaluated our new constructions on a commodity parallel system, an SGI Origin2000 multiprocessor, demonstrating that they are not only of theoretical interest.

Brief Bio:
Phuong H. Ha received a BEng degree in Information Technology from HoChiMinh City University of Technology, Vietnam and a PhD degree in Computer Science from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. The title of his PhD thesis is ``Reactive Concurrent Data Structures and Algorithms for Synchronization''. His research interests are online algorithms and parallel/distributed computing and systems, including concurrent data objects and efficient fault- tolerant synchronization. Together with his colleagues, he has developed several *reactive* concurrent data objects for inter- process synchronization.

Web-page:
http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~phuong