Can parallel data structures rely on automatic memory managers?

Abstract

The complexity of parallel data structures is often measured by two major factors: the throughput they provide and the progress they guarantee. Progress guarantees are particularly important for systems that require responsiveness such as real-time systems, operating systems, interactive systems, etc. Notions of progress guarantees such as lock-freedom, wait-freedom, and obstruction-freedom that provide different levels of guarantees have been proposed in the literature [4, 6]. Concurrent access (and furthermore, optimistic access) to shared objects makes the management of memory one of the more complex aspects of concurrent algorithms design. The use of automatic memory management greatly simplifies such algorithms [11, 3, 2, 9]. However, while the existence of lock-free garbage collection has been demonstrated [5], the existence of a practical automatic memory manager that supports lock-free or wait-free algorithms is still open. Furthermore, known schemes for manual reclamation of unused objects are difficult to use and impose a significant overhead on the execution [10].