Summary: Visual­MCM: Visualising Execution Histories
on Multiple Memory Consistency Models
Alba Cristina Melo and Simone Cintra Chagas
University of Brasilia, Campus Universitario ­ Asa Norte, Brasilia, Brazil
Abstract. The behaviour of Distributed Shared Memory Systems is
dictated by the memory consistency model. In order to provide a better
understanding on the semantics of the memory models, many researchers
have proposed formalisms to define them. Even with formal definitions,
it is still difficult to say what kind of execution histories can be produced
on a particular memory model. In this paper, we propose Visual­MCM,
a visualisation tool that shows what operations orderings could lead to
user­defined execution histories on different memory models. We also
present a prototype of Visual­MCM that analyses execution histories for
two different memory consistency models.
1 Introduction
Using the shared memory programming paradigm in parallel architectures is
quite complex. The main reason for this is the difficulty to make the shared
memory behave exactly as if it was a uniprocessor memory. This characteristic
is important since it could make uniprocessor programs automatically portable
to parallel architectures. Besides, programmers are already used to the unipro­

Source: Ayala-Rincón, Mauricio - Departamento de Matemática, Universidade de Brasília

Collections: Mathematics