SCAT: Scalable Concurrency Abstractions via Transactions

We are investigating issues related to software transactions, a concurrency primitive that is easier-to-use and harder-to-implement than locks. Our work has considered language design, semantics, (software) implementation, and evaluation (for reliability and performance).

Relevant publications:

• High-Level Small-Step Operational Semantics for Transactions (POPL 2008)
      Katherine F. Moore and Dan Grossman
  Note: An earlier version was presented informally at TRANSACT 2007.
• Software Transactions Meet First-Class Continuations (SCHEME 2007)
      Aaron Kimball and Dan Grossman
• The Transactional Memory / Garbage Collection Analogy (OOPSLA 2007)
      Dan Grossman
• Enforcing Isolation and Ordering in STM (PLDI 2007)
      Tatiana Shpeisman, Vijay Menon, Ali-Reza Adl-Tabatabai, Steve Balensiefer, Dan Grossman, Richard Hudson, Katherine F. Moore, and Bratin Saha
• Atomicity via Source-to-Source Translation (MSPC 2006)
      Benjamin Hindman and Dan Grossman
  Note: TR 2006-05-01 is an expanded description of this work.
• What Do High-Level Memory Models Mean for Transactions? (MSPC 2006)
      Dan Grossman, Jeremy Manson, and William Pugh
  
• AtomCaml: First-Class Atomicity via Rollback (ICFP 2005)
      Michael F. Ringenburg and Dan Grossman

Available software (download after following links):

• AtomCaml
• AtomEclipse
• AtomJava
• AtomScheme

Current Contacts:

Dan Grossman, Steve Balensiefer, Aaron Kimball, Katherine Moore

Acknowledgments:

Michael Ringenburg, Benjamin Hindman, Tim Prouty, Eric Choi