Atomic semantics
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Atomic semantics is a term which describes the guarantees provided by a data register shared by several processors in a parallel machine or in a network of computers working together.
Atomic semantics are defined for a variable with a single writer but multiple readers. These semantics are very strong: they guarantee that the read and write operations to the variable behave exactly as if they happened instantaneously in some point in time which is within the actual time where the operation took place.
The read and write registers are one of the basic objects encountered in distributed systems. When these object are accessed by a single process it should be local to that process; otherwise, we consider it as a shared register. A local register lets a process to store the data.Similarly,a shared register lets concurrent processes exchange data.
See also
References
- Atomic semantics are defined formally in Lamport's "On Interprocess Communication" Distributed Computing 1, 2 (1986), 77-101. (Also appeared as SRC Research Report 8).