Fastpath speculative parallelization

  • Authors:
  • Michael F. Spear;Kirk Kelsey;Tongxin Bai;Luke Dalessandro;Michael L. Scott;Chen Ding;Peng Wu

  • Affiliations:
  • Lehigh University;University of Rochester;University of Rochester;University of Rochester;University of Rochester;University of Rochester;IBM T. J. Watson Research Center

  • Venue:
  • LCPC'09 Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

We describe Fastpath, a system for speculative parallelization of sequential programs on conventional multicore processors. Our system distinguishes between the lead thread, which executes at almost-native speed, and speculative threads, which execute somewhat slower. This allows us to achieve nontrivial speedup, even on two-core machines. We present a mathematical model of potential speedup, parameterized by application characteristics and implementation constants. We also present preliminary results gleaned from two different Fastpath implementations, each derived from an implementation of software transactional memory.