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Summary: Litmus Tests for Comparing Memory Consistency Models:
How Long Do They Need to Be?
Sela Mador-Haim
University of Pennsylvania
Rajeev Alur
University of Pennsylvania
Milo M. K. Martin
University of Pennsylvania
ABSTRACT
Memory consistency litmus tests are small parallel programs
that are designed to illustrate subtle differences between
memory consistency models by exhibiting different outcomes
for different models. In this paper, we show that for a class
of memory models that is restricted yet expressive enough
to include all store-atomic hardware memory models, lit-
mus tests of a bounded size are sufficient for illustrating dif-
ferences between memory consistency models in this class.
We establish a bound of two threads and no more than six
memory access instructions for differentiating litmus tests
in this class of models. Thus, we can prove equivalence of
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