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Persistency semantics of the Intel-x86 architecture

Authors:

John Wickerson,

Viktor VafeiadisAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, Volume 4, Issue POPL

Article No.: 11, Pages 1 - 31

https://doi.org/10.1145/3371079

Published: 20 December 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Emerging non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies promise the durability of disks with the performance of RAM. To describe the persistency guarantees of NVM, several memory persistency models have been proposed in the literature. However, the persistency semantics of the ubiquitous x86 architecture remains unexplored to date. To close this gap, we develop the Px86 (‘persistent x86’) model, formalising the persistency semantics of Intel-x86 for the first time. We formulate Px86 both operationally and declaratively, and prove that the two characterisations are equivalent. To demonstrate the application of Px86, we develop two persistent libraries over Px86: a persistent transactional library, and a persistent variant of the Michael–Scott queue. Finally, we encode our declarative Px86 model in Alloy and use it to generate persistency litmus tests automatically.

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Cited By

Schellhorn GBodenmüller SReif W(2025)Verification of forward simulations with thread-local, step-local proof obligationsScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2024.103227241(103227)Online publication date: Apr-2025
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Huang ZRavi SWang CFilkov VRay BZhou M(2024)Discovering Likely Program Invariants for Persistent MemoryProceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3691620.3695544(1795-1807)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
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Oliveira Vale AWang ZChen YYou PShao Z(2024)Compositionality and Observational Refinement for Linearizability with CrashesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36897928:OOPSLA2(2296-2324)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
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Index Terms

Persistency semantics of the Intel-x86 architecture
1. Theory of computation
  1. Models of computation
    1. Concurrency
  2. Semantics and reasoning

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Published In

cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages Volume 4, Issue POPL

January 2020

1984 pages

EISSN:2475-1421

DOI:10.1145/3377388

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Copyright © 2019 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 20 December 2019

Published in PACMPL Volume 4, Issue POPL

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Cited By

Schellhorn GBodenmüller SReif W(2025)Verification of forward simulations with thread-local, step-local proof obligationsScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2024.103227241(103227)Online publication date: Apr-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2024.103227
Huang ZRavi SWang CFilkov VRay BZhou M(2024)Discovering Likely Program Invariants for Persistent MemoryProceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3691620.3695544(1795-1807)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3691620.3695544
Oliveira Vale AWang ZChen YYou PShao Z(2024)Compositionality and Observational Refinement for Linearizability with CrashesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36897928:OOPSLA2(2296-2324)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689792
Ambal GDongol BEran HKlimis VLahav ORaad A(2024)Semantics of Remote Direct Memory Access: Operational and Declarative Models of RDMA on TSO ArchitecturesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36897818:OOPSLA2(1982-2009)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689781
Abdulla PAtig MBouajjani AKumar KSaivasan P(2024)Verification under Intel-x86 with PersistencyProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36564258:PLDI(1189-1212)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3656425
Bailleu MStavrakakis DRocha RChakraborty SGarg DBhatotia P(2024)Toast: A Heterogeneous Memory Management SystemProceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques10.1145/3656019.3676944(53-65)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3656019.3676944
Klimis VDonaldson AVafeiadis VWickerson JRaad ARoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey MHierons RMadeira H(2024)Challenges in Empirically Testing Memory Persistency ModelsProceedings of the 2024 ACM/IEEE 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: New Ideas and Emerging Results10.1145/3639476.3639765(82-86)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639476.3639765
Anand SFriedman MGiardino MAlonso GTsafrir DMusuvathi MGupta RAbu-Ghazaleh N(2024)Skip It: Take Control of Your Cache!Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Volume 210.1145/3620665.3640407(1077-1094)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2024
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Vafeiadi Bila EDongol B(2024)A verified durable transactional mutex lock for persistent x86-TSOFormal Methods in System Design10.1007/s10703-024-00462-1Online publication date: 31-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10703-024-00462-1
Stefanesco LRaad AVafeiadis V(2024)Specifying and Verifying Persistent LibrariesProgramming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-3-031-57267-8_8(185-211)Online publication date: 5-Apr-2024
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