First-class synchronization barriers

  • Authors:
  • Franklyn Turbak

  • Affiliations:
  • Wellesley College Computer Science Department

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the first ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming
  • Year:
  • 1996

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Abstract

Our purpose is to promote a second-class mechanism --- the synchronization barrier --- to a first-class value. We introduce the synchron, a novel synchronization mechanism that enables the coordination of a dynamically varying set of concurrent threads that share access to a first-class synchronization token. We demonstrate how synchrons can be used to modularly manage resources in cases where existing techniques are either inapplicable or non-modular. In particular, synchronized lazy aggregates enable the first space-efficient aggregate data decomposition of a wide range of algorithms. We also introduce explicit-demand graph reduction, a new semantic framework that we have developed to describe concurrency and explain the meaning of a synchron rendezvous.