Algorithms adapting to point contention

Abstract

This article introduces the sieve , a novel building block that allows to adapt to the number of simultaneously active processes (the point contention ) during the execution of an operation. We present an implementation of the sieve in which each sieve operation requires O ( k log k ) steps, where k is the point contention during the operation.The sieve is the cornerstone of the first wait-free algorithms that adapt to point contention using only read and write operations. Specifically, we present efficient algorithms for long-lived renaming, timestamping and collecting information.