Transactions are back---but are they the same?

  • Authors:
  • Pascal Felber;Christof Fetzer;Rachid Guerraoui;Tim Harris

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland;TU Dresden, Germany;EPFL, Switzerland;Microsoft Research, UK

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGACT News
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Transactions are back in the spotlight! They are emerging in concurrent programming languages under the name of transactional memory (TM). Their new role? Concurrency control on new multi-core processors. From afar they look the same as good ol' database transactions. But are they really? In this position paper, we reflect about the distinguishing features of these memory transactions with respect to their database cousins. Disclaimer: By its very nature, this position paper does not try to avoid subjectivity.