Multi-word Atomic Read/Write Registers on Multiprocessor Systems

Report, 2004

Modern multiprocessor systems offer advanced synchronization primitives, built in hardware, to support the development of efficient parallel algorithms. In this paper we develop a simple and efficient algorithm for atomic registers (variables) of arbitrary length. The simplicity and better complexity of the algorithm is achieved via the utilization of two such common synchronization primitives. In this paper we also evaluate the performance of our algorithm and the performance of a practical previously know algorithm that is based only on read and write primitives. The evaluation is performed on 3 well-known, parallel architectures. This evaluation clearly shows that both algorithms are practical and that as the size of the register increases our algorithm performs better, accordingly to its complexity behavior.