STM versus lock-based systems: an energy consumption perspective

The shift towards multicore processors and the well-known drawbacks imposed by lock-based synchronization have forced researchers to devise new alternatives for building concurrent software, of which transactional memory is a promising one. This work presents a comprehensive study on the energy consumption of a state-of-the-art STM (Software Transactional Memory) implementation using STAMP, a representative set of transactional workloads, comparing it to its lock-based counterpart. Our results show that STM can be up to 22x (∼3x on average) more energyinefficient when compared to locks. This work is a novel step towards a better understanding of the energy behavior of STM systems. Categories and Subject Descriptors C.4 [Performance Of Systems]: Design studies General Terms Design, Performance

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: ISLPED
• Authors: Felipe Klein, Alexandro Baldassin, Joao Moreira, Paulo Centoducatte, Sandro Rigo, Rodolfo Azevedo
• Keywords: Hardware, ISLPED 2010, Software Transactional Memory, Studies General Terms, Transactional Memory