Title :
The complexity of verifying memory coherence and consistency
Author :
Cantin, Jason F. ; Lipasti, Mikko H. ; Smith, James E.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Wisconsin-Madison Univ., Madison, WI, USA
fDate :
7/1/2005 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
The problem of testing shared memories for memory coherence and consistency is studied. First, it is proved that detecting violations of coherence in an execution is NP-complete, and it remains NP-complete for a number of restricted instances. This result leads to a proof that all known consistency models are NP-hard to verify. The complexity of verifying consistency models is not a mere consequence of coherence, and verifying sequential consistency remains NP-complete even after coherence has been verified.
Keywords :
computational complexity; fault tolerant computing; processor scheduling; shared memory systems; storage management; NP-complete problems; NP-hard problems; error-checking; fault-tolerance; memory coherence verification; memory consistency complexity; memory structures; scheduling; shared memory testing; Algorithm design and analysis; Circuit testing; Coherence; Fault tolerance; Hardware; Multiprocessing systems; Processor scheduling; Reliability theory; Scheduling algorithm; System testing; Hardware; design styles; error-checking; fault-tolerance; memory structures; nonnumerical algorithms and problems; reliability; sequencing and scheduling.; shared memory; testing; theory of computation;
Journal_Title :
Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TPDS.2005.86
