The complexity of verifying memory coherence and consistency
Cantin, J.F.
Lipasti, M.H.
Smith, J.E.
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Wisconsin-Madison Univ., Madison, WI, USA
This paper appears in: Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE Transactions on Publication Date: July 2005
Volume: 16
,
Issue: 7
On page(s):
663
- 671
ISSN: 1045-9219
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/TPDS.2005.86
Current Version Published: 2005-05-31
Abstract
The problem of testing shared memories for memory coherence and consistency is studied. First, it is proved that detecting violations of coherence in an execution is NP-complete, and it remains NP-complete for a number of restricted instances. This result leads to a proof that all known consistency models are NP-hard to verify. The complexity of verifying consistency models is not a mere consequence of coherence, and verifying sequential consistency remains NP-complete even after coherence has been verified.
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