Atomicity via source-to-source translation

Abstract

We present an implementation and evaluation of atomicity (also known as software transactions) for a dialect of Java. Our implementation is fundamentally different from prior work in three respects: (1) It is entirely a source-to-source translation, producing Java source code that can be compiled by any Java compiler and run on any Java Virtual Machine. (2) It can enforce "strong" atomicity without assuming special hardware or a uniprocessor. (3) The implementation uses locks rather than optimistic concurrency, but it cannot deadlock and requires inter-thread communication only when there is data contention.