2002/08/19 by Robert C. Steinke, R. C. Steinke, Steinke, Robert C. +3
Computer Science · #Advanced Data Storage Technologies #D.1.3 #Distributed #Distributed systems and fault tolerance #F.1.2 #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Parallel #Parallel Computing and Optimization Techniques #and Cluster Computing (cs.DC) #cs.DC
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cs/0208027
arxiv created 2002/08/19 · openalex publication_date 2002/08/19 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Memory consistency models have been developed to specify what values may be returned by a read given that, in a distributed system, memory operations may only be partially ordered. Before this work, consistency models were defined independently. Each model followed a set of rules which was separate from the rules of every other model. In our work we have defined a set of four consistency properties. Any subset of the four properties yields a set of rules which constitute a consistency model. Every consistency model previously described in the literature can be defined based on our four properties. Therefore, we present these properties as a unfied theory of shared memory consistency.