Nonatomic mutual exclusion with local spinning

We present an N-process local-spin mutual exclusion algorithm, based on nonatomic reads and writes, in which each process performs Θ(log N) remote memory references to enter and exit its critical section. This algorithm is derived from Yang and Anderson's atomic tree-based local-spin algorithm in a way that preserves its time complexity. No atomic read/write algorithm with better asymptotic worst-case time complexity (under the remote-mem-ory-refer-ences measure) is currently known. This suggests that atomic memory is not fundamentally required if one is interested in worst-case time complexity.The same cannot be said if one is interested in fast-path algorithms (in which contention-free time complexity is required to be O(1)) or adaptive algorithms (in which time complexity is required to depend only on the number of contending processes). We show that such algorithms fundamentally require memory accesses to be atomic. In particular, we show that for any N-process nonatomic algorithm, there exists a single-process execution in which the lone competing process accesses Ω(log N/log log N) distinct variables to enter its critical section. Thus, fast and adaptive algorithms are impossible even if caching techniques are used to avoid accessing the processors-to-memory interconnection network.This paper was invited for inclusion in the special issue of this journal based on selected papers presented in PODC '02 (Distributed Computing 18(1)).It appears separately because of a publication delay. Yong-Jik Kimreceived a B.S. degree in Physics/Computer Science from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in 1998, and a Ph.D.degree in Computer Science from the University of Notrh Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003. He currently works for the RDBMS group in Tmax Soft, and is otherwise occupied with his newborn daughter Darum, which means “difference” in Korean. James H. Anderson is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received a B.S.degree in Computer Science from Michigan State University in 1982, an M.S. degree in Computer Science from Purdue University in 1983, and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin in 1990. Before joining UNC-Chapel Hill in 1993, he was with the Computer Science Department at the University of Maryland between 1990 and 1993. Dr.Anderson's main research interests are within the areas of real-time systems and concurrent and distributed computing.