Most complexitymeasures for concurrent algorithms for asynchronous sharedmemory architectures focus on process steps and memory consumption. In practice, however, performance of multiprocessor algorithms is heavily influenced by contention, the extent to which processes access the same location at the same time. Nevertheless, even though contention is one of the principal considerations affecting the performance of real algorithms on real multiprocessors, there are no formal tools for analyzing the contention of asynchronous shared-memory algorithms. This paper introduces the first formal complexity model for contention in multiprocessors. We focus on the standard multiprocessor architecture in which n asynchronous processes communicate by applying read, write, and read-modify-write operations to a shared memory. We use our model to derive two kinds of results: (1) lower bounds on contention for well known basic problems such as agreement and mutual exclusion, and (2) trade-offs betwe...

The queue-read, queue-write (qrqw) parallel random access machine (pram) model permits concurrent reading and writing to shared memory locations, but at a cost proportional to the number of readers/writers to any one memory location in a given step. The qrqw pram model reflects the contention properties of most commercially available parallel machines more accurately than either the well-studied crcw pram or erew pram models, and can be efficiently emulated with only logarithmic slowdown on hypercubetype non-combining networks. This paper describes fast, low-contention, work-optimal, randomized qrqw pram algorithms for the fundamental problems of load balancing, multiple compaction, generating a random permutation, parallel hashing, and distributive sorting. These logarithmic or sublogarithmic time algorithms considerably improve upon the best known erew pram algorithms for these problems, while avoiding the high-contention steps typical of crcw pram algorithms. An illustrative expe...

Abstract. This paper introduces the queue-read queue-write (qrqw) parallel random access machine (pram) model, which permits concurrent reading and writing to shared-memory locations, but at a cost proportional to the number of readers/writers to any one memory location in a given step. Prior to this work there were no formal complexity models that accounted for the contention to memory locations, despite its large impact on the performance of parallel programs. The qrqw pram model reflects the contention properties of most commercially available parallel machines more accurately than either the well-studied crcw pram or erew pram models: the crcw model does not adequately penalize algorithms with high contention to shared-memory locations, while the erew model is too strict in its insistence on zero contention at each step. The�qrqw pram is strictly more powerful than the erew pram. This paper shows a separation of log n between the two models, and presents faster and more efficient qrqw algorithms for several basic problems, such as linear compaction, leader election, and processor allocation. Furthermore, we present a work-preserving emulation of the qrqw pram with only logarithmic slowdown on Valiant’s bsp model, and hence on hypercube-type noncombining networks, even when latency, synchronization, and memory granularity overheads are taken into account. This matches the bestknown emulation result for the erew pram, and considerably improves upon the best-known efficient emulation for the crcw pram on such networks. Finally, the paper presents several lower bound results for this model, including lower bounds on the time required for broadcasting and for leader election.

This paper presents results for the queue-read, queue-write asynchronous parallel random access machine (qrqw asynchronous pram) model, which is the asynchronous variant of the qrqw pram model. The qrqw pram family of models, which was introduced earlier by the authors, permit concurrent reading and writing to shared memory locations, but each memory location is viewed as having a queue which can service at most one request at a time. In the basic qrqw pram model each processor executes a series of reads to shared memory locations, a series of local computation steps, and a series of writes to shared memory locations, and then synchronizes with all other processors; thus this can be viewed as a bulk-synchronous model. In contrast, in the qrqw asynchronous pram model discussed in this paper, there is no imposed bulksynchronization between processors, and each processor proceeds at its own pace. Thus, the qrqw asynchronous pram serves as a better model for designing and analyz...

This dissertation studies issues critical to efficient N-body simulations on parallel computers. The N-body problem poses several challenges for distributed-memory implementation: adaptive distributed data structures, irregular data access patterns, and irregular and adaptive communication patterns. We introduce new techniques to maintain dynamic irregular data structures, to vectorize irregular computational structures, and for efficient communication. We report results from experiments on the Connection Machine CM-5. The results demonstrate the performance advantages of design simplicity; the code provides generality of use on various message-passing architectures. Our methods have been used as the basis of a C++ library that provides abstractions for tree computations to ease the development of different N-body codes. This dissertation also presents the atomic message model to capture the important factors of efficient communication in message-passing systems. The atomic model was m...