The performance power of software combining in persistence

Abstract

The availability of Non-Volatile Main Memory (known as NVMM) enables the design of recoverable concurrent algorithms. We study the power of software combining in achieving recoverable synchronization and designing persistent data structures. Software combining is a general synchronization approach, which attempts to simulate the ideal world when executing synchronization requests (i.e., requests that must be executed in mutual exclusion). A single thread, called the combiner, executes all active requests, while the rest of the threads are waiting for the combiner to notify them that their requests have been applied. Software combining significantly decreases the synchronization cost and outperforms many other synchronization techniques in various cases.