Two-phase conflict detection for transactional memory on clusters

Ruibo Wang, Kai Lu, Xicheng Lu

Abstract: Transactional Memory (TM) research has focused on multi-core processors; limited research has been aimed at the clusters. The intention of deploying TM on clusters is using more processors to solve big problems with this convenient technique. But the performance of the existing cluster's TM is poor because of the expensive remote access. The conflict detection, which is the most frequent operation of TM, is highly depending on the remote memory access. The remote memory access is usually 10 to 100 times slower than the local one in a cluster. We introduce the two-phase conflict detection strategy. By dividing the conflict detection process into two levels, the hierarchical strategy provides a good practical performance.