Timing properties and correctness for structured parallel programs on x86-64 multicores

Abstract

This paper determines correctness and timing properties for structured parallel programs on x86-64 multicores. Multicore architectures are increasingly common, but real architectures have unpredictable timing properties, and even correctness is not obvious above the relaxed-memory concurrency models that are enforced by commonly-used hardware. This paper takes a rigorous approach to correctness and timing properties, examining common locking protocols from first principles, and extending this through queues to structured parallel constructs. We prove functional correctness and derive simple timing models, and both extend for the first time from low-level primitives to high-level parallel patterns. Our derived high-level timing models for structured parallel programs allow us to accurately predict upper bounds on program execution times on x86-64 multicores.