Avoiding consistency exceptions under strong memory models

Abstract

Shared-memory languages and systems generally provide weak or undefined semantics for executions with data races. Prior work has proposed memory consistency models that ensure well-defined, easy-to-understand semantics based on region serializability (RS), but the resulting system may throw a consistency exception in the presence of a data race. Consistency exceptions can occur unexpectedly even in well-tested programs, hurting availability and thus limiting the practicality of RS-based memory models.