Project description
Programming with weakly consistent memory
Strong consistency limits scalability in concurrent systems because it requires global coordination. While weak memory models are adopted in shared-memory programming, lineariseability remains the standard for concurrent objects, restricting programmers' performance options. The ERC-funded FOCUS project aims to develop relaxations of lineariseability for programming with weakly consistent memory while preserving its advantages. It will introduce new correctness concepts to enhance client reasoning through in-language observational refinement, promoting compositionality among different correctness criteria. The project will also provide theoretical foundations for impossibility results and bounds on coordination costs for various objects, supporting the development of efficient libraries under weak memory consistency. This work is designed to advance performance and scalability in the new era of distributed memory enabled by CXL infrastructure.
Objective
Despite being intuitive, strong consistency necessitates frequent global coordination, significantly limiting the scalability of concurrent systems. In shared-memory programming, the need to relax the consistency guarantees has long been recognized, spurring extensive research and driving the adoption of weak memory models in programming languages. However, the situation is markedly different at the level of concurrent objects. For objects---designed to provide common functionalities to clients without requiring knowledge of the internal implementation---linearizability remains the de facto standard, leaving programmers with limited means to use formally specified objects free from the performance penalties of strong consistency.
Our overarching goal is to address this gap by designing foundational weakenings of linearizability for general-purpose programming with various forms of weakly consistent memory, while retaining the benefits of linearizability. In particular, we will develop correctness notions that enable client reasoning through in-language observational refinement, analogous to how linearizability readily corresponds to refinement w.r.t. atomic reference implementations. This correspondence will also be the key to achieving compositionality of different correctness criteria within a single program---an essential yet largely overlooked necessity in software development. Additionally, we will develop theoretical foundations that establish impossibility results and lower bounds on coordination costs for various objects under different correctness criteria.
To achieve our goal, we will build on recent advancements by the PI in the study of weak memory models. We envision our outcomes fostering the principled development and use of libraries under weak memory consistency, driving significant improvements in performance and scalability, and positioning us for the emerging era of distributed memory powered by CXL infrastructures.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2025-COG
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69978 Tel Aviv
Israel
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