Extending Intel-x86 consistency and persistency: formalising the semantics of Intel-x86 memory types and non-temporal stores
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Raad, Azalea
Maranget, Luc
Vafeiadis, Viktor
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Existing semantic formalisations of the Intel-x86 architecture cover only a small fragment of its available features that are relevant for the consistency semantics of multi-threaded programs as well as the persistency semantics of programs interfacing with non-volatile memory.
We extend these formalisations to cover: (1) non-temporal writes, which provide higher performance and are used to ensure that updates are flushed to memory; (2) reads and writes to other Intel-x86 memory types, namely uncacheable, write-combined, and write-through; as well as (3) the interaction between these features. We develop our formal model in both operational and declarative styles, and prove that the two characterisations are equivalent. We have empirically validated our formalisation of the consistency semantics of these additional features and their subtle interactions by extensive testing on different Intel-x86 implementations.
We extend these formalisations to cover: (1) non-temporal writes, which provide higher performance and are used to ensure that updates are flushed to memory; (2) reads and writes to other Intel-x86 memory types, namely uncacheable, write-combined, and write-through; as well as (3) the interaction between these features. We develop our formal model in both operational and declarative styles, and prove that the two characterisations are equivalent. We have empirically validated our formalisation of the consistency semantics of these additional features and their subtle interactions by extensive testing on different Intel-x86 implementations.
Date Issued
2022-01-16
Date Acceptance
2022-01-01
Citation
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, 2022, 6 (POPL), pp.1-31
ISSN
2475-1421
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Start Page
1
End Page
31
Journal / Book Title
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
Volume
6
Issue
POPL
Copyright Statement
© 2022 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
License URL
Sponsor
UK Research and Innovation
Identifier
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3498683
Grant Number
MR/V024299/1
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2022-01-12