License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)
When quoting this document, please refer to the following
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2019.3
URN: urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-113108
URL: http://dagstuhl.sunsite.rwth-aachen.de/volltexte/2019/11310/
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Baig, Mirza Ahad ; Hendler, Danny ; Milani, Alessia ; Travers, Corentin

Long-Lived Counters with Polylogarithmic Amortized Step Complexity

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LIPIcs-DISC-2019-3.pdf (0.6 MB)

Abstract

A shared-memory counter is a well-studied and widely-used concurrent object. It supports two operations: An Inc operation that increases its value by 1 and a Read operation that returns its current value. Jayanti, Tan and Toueg [Jayanti et al., 2000] proved a linear lower bound on the worst-case step complexity of obstruction-free implementations, from read and write operations, of a large class of shared objects that includes counters. The lower bound leaves open the question of finding counter implementations with sub-linear amortized step complexity.
In this paper, we address this gap. We present the first wait-free n-process counter, implemented using only read and write operations, whose amortized operation step complexity is O(log^2 n) in all executions. This is the first non-blocking read/write counter algorithm that provides sub-linear amortized step complexity in executions of arbitrary length. Since a logarithmic lower bound on the amortized step complexity of obstruction-free counter implementations exists, our upper bound is optimal up to a logarithmic factor.

BibTeX - Entry

@InProceedings{baig_et_al:LIPIcs:2019:11310,
  author =	{Mirza Ahad Baig and Danny Hendler and Alessia Milani and Corentin Travers},
  title =	{{Long-Lived Counters with Polylogarithmic Amortized Step Complexity}},
  booktitle =	{33rd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2019)},
  pages =	{3:1--3:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-126-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{146},
  editor =	{Jukka Suomela},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl--Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2019/11310},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-113108},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2019.3},
  annote =	{Keywords: Shared Memory, Wait-freedom, Counter, Amortized Complexity, Concurrent Objects}
}

Keywords: Shared Memory, Wait-freedom, Counter, Amortized Complexity, Concurrent Objects
Collection: 33rd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2019)
Issue Date: 2019
Date of publication: 08.10.2019

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