Atomicity as a First-Class System Provision

J. Eliot B. Moss (Department of Computer Science University of Massachusetts, USA)

Ravi Rajwar (Intel Corporation Hillsboro, USA)

Abstract: We argue that atomicity, i.e., atomic actions with most of the traditional "ACID" properties, namely atomicity, consistency, and isolation but perhaps not durability, should be provided as a fundamental first class resource in computer systems. This implies coherent, convenient, and well-engineered support from the hardware, through the run-time system, programming language, and libraries, to the operating system. We articulate the advantages of this approach, indicate what has already been accomplished, and outline what remains to be done to realize the vision.

Keywords: atomicity, cache coherence, transactional memory, transactions

Categories: C.0