Overview

Memory transactions, similar to database transactions, allow a programmer to focus on the logic of their program and let the system ensure that transactions are atomic and isolated. Thus, programs using transactions do not suffer from deadlock. However, when a transaction performs I/O or accesses kernel resources, the atomicity and isolation guarantees from the TM system do not apply to the kernel.

The xCall interface is a new API that provides transactional semantics for system calls. With a combination of deferral and compensation, xCalls enable transactional memory programs to use common OS functionality within transactions.

People

Students:  
Haris Volos
Andres Jaan Tack
Faculty:  
Michael M. Swift
Alumni:  
Neelam Goyal

Acknowledgements

This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) grants CNS-0205286, CNS-0720565, CNS-0834473. Thanks to the Hewlett Packard Corporation for equipment donations.