Title: How to Support Non-Blocking Transactions in Practical TM Specifications?

Maged Michael, IBM Research

Abstract: Non-blocking progress was an
essential requirement of the earliest proposals for transactional
memory systems. However, almost all recent TM implementations do not
support non-blocking transactions. Furthermore, no proposals for TM
language specification incorporate non-blocking transactions. This talk
explores the challenges of incorporating non-blocking transactions in a
practical TM specification in combination with other useful features.
The Draft Specification for Transactional Language Constructs for C++,
which does not currently support non-blocking transactions, is used as
a concrete case study for exploring the challenges of supporting
non-blocking transactions in a practical TM specification. The talk
aims to identify the issues and raise questions about the possibilities
and trade-offs involved in supporting non-blocking transactions in
combination with other useful TM features.