{"id":158380,"date":"2009-03-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/lightweight-software-transactions-for-games-2\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T20:19:44","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T03:19:44","slug":"lightweight-software-transactions-for-games-2","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/lightweight-software-transactions-for-games-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightweight Software Transactions for Games"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>To realize the performance potential of multiple cores, software\u00a0 developers must architect their programs for concurrency. Unfortunately, for many applications, threads and locks are difficult to use efficiently and correctly. Thus, researchers have proposed transactional memory as a simpler alternative. To investigate if and how software transactional memory (STM) can help a programmer to parallelize applications, we perform a case study on a game application called SpaceWars3D. After experiencing suboptimal performance, we depart from classic STM designs and propose a programming model that uses long-running, abort-free transactions that rely on user specifications to avoid or resolve conflicts. With this model we achieve the combined goal of\u00a0 competitive performance and improved programmability.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To realize the performance potential of multiple cores, software\u00a0 developers must architect their programs for concurrency. Unfortunately, for many applications, threads and locks are difficult to use efficiently and correctly. Thus, researchers have proposed transactional memory as a simpler alternative. To investigate if and how software transactional memory (STM) can help a programmer to parallelize [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13560],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-158380","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"USENIX","msr_edition":"First USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Parallelism","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2009-03-31","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"207764","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","title":"baldassin-burckhardt.pdf","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/baldassin-burckhardt.pdf","id":207764,"label_id":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[{"id":207764,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/baldassin-burckhardt.pdf"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"text","value":"Alexandro Baldassin","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"sburckha","user_id":33544,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=sburckha"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[],"msr_project":[170557],"publication":[],"video":[],"download":[],"msr_publication_type":"inproceedings","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":170557,"post_title":"Concurrent Revisions","post_name":"concurrent-revisions","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2010-09-15 15:02:07","post_modified":"2017-06-06 09:38:46","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/concurrent-revisions\/","post_excerpt":"The Revisions project introduces a novel programming model for concurrent, parallel, and distributed applications. It provides programmers with a simple, yet powerful and efficient mechanism (based on mutable snapshots and deterministic conflict resolution) to execute various application tasks in parallel even if those tasks access the same data and may exhibit read-write or write-write conflicts. To find out more about the basic idea and how it works: Read our OOPSLA 2010\u00a0paper (links for all publications&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/170557"}]}}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/158380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-research-item"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/158380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":526430,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/158380\/revisions\/526430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-content-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-content-type?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-highlight","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-highlight?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-type?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-product-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-product-type?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-focus-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-focus-area?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-platform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-platform?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-download-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-download-source?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-field-of-study","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-field-of-study?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-conference?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-journal","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-journal?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=158380"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=158380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}