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Atomic (computer Science)
In concurrent programming, an operation (or set of operations) is linearizable if it consists of an ordered list of Execution (computing), invocation and response Event (computing), events, that may be extended by adding response events such that: # The extended list can be re-expressed as a sequential history (is serializability, serializable). # That sequential history is a subset of the original unextended list. Informally, this means that the unmodified list of events is linearizable if and only if its invocations were serializable, but some of the responses of the serial schedule have yet to return. In a concurrent system, processes can access a shared Object (computer science), object at the same time. Because multiple processes are accessing a single object, a situation may arise in which while one process is accessing the object, another process changes its contents. Making a system linearizable is one solution to this problem. In a linearizable system, although operat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Context Switch
In computing, a context switch is the process of storing the state of a process or thread, so that it can be restored and resume execution at a later point, and then restoring a different, previously saved, state. This allows multiple processes to share a single central processing unit (CPU), and is an essential feature of a multiprogramming or multitasking operating system. In a traditional CPU, each process – a program in execution – uses the various CPU registers to store data and hold the current state of the running process. However, in a multitasking operating system, the operating system switches between processes or threads to allow the execution of multiple processes simultaneously. For every switch, the operating system must save the state of the currently running process, followed by loading the next process state, which will run on the CPU. This sequence of operations that stores the state of the running process and loads the following running process is called a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
C Programming Language
C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of the targeted Central processing unit, CPUs. It has found lasting use in operating systems code (especially in Kernel (operating system), kernels), device drivers, and protocol stacks, but its use in application software has been decreasing. C is commonly used on computer architectures that range from the largest supercomputers to the smallest microcontrollers and embedded systems. A successor to the programming language B (programming language), B, C was originally developed at Bell Labs by Ritchie between 1972 and 1973 to construct utilities running on Unix. It was applied to re-implementing the kernel of the Unix operating system. During the 1980s, C gradually gained popularity. It has become one of the most widely used programming langu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyrix Coma Bug
The Cyrix coma bug is a design flaw in Cyrix 6x86 (introduced in 1996), 6x86L, and early 6x86MX processors that allows a non-privileged program to hang the computer. Discovery According to Andrew Balsa, around the time of the discovery of the F00F bug on Intel Pentium, Serguei Shtyliov from Moscow found a flaw in a Cyrix processor while developing an IDE disk driver in assembly language. Alexandr Konosevich, from Omsk, further researched the bug and coauthored an article with Uwe Post in the German technology magazine ''c't'', calling it the "hidden CLI bug" (CLI is the instruction that disables interrupts in the x86 architecture). Balsa, as a member on the Linux kernel mailing list, confirmed that the following C program (which uses inline x86-specific assembly language) could be compiled and run by an unprivileged user: unsigned char c = ; int main() { asm ( " movl $c, %ebx\n" "again: xchgl (%ebx), %eax\n" " movl %eax, %edx\n" " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denial Of Service Attack
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyberattack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to a network. Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted machine or resource with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being fulfilled. The range of attacks varies widely, spanning from inundating a server with millions of requests to slow its performance, overwhelming a server with a substantial amount of invalid data, to submitting requests with an illegitimate IP address. In a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack), the incoming traffic flooding the victim originates from many different sources. More sophisticated strategies are required to mitigate this type of attack; simply attempting to block a single source is insuffic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infinite Loop
In computer programming, an infinite loop (or endless loop) is a sequence of instructions that, as written, will continue endlessly, unless an external intervention occurs, such as turning off power via a switch or pulling a plug. It may be intentional. There is no general algorithm to determine whether a computer program contains an infinite loop or not; this is the halting problem. Overview This differs from "a type of computer program that runs the same instructions continuously until it is either stopped or interrupted". Consider the following pseudocode: how_many = 0 while is_there_more_data() do how_many = how_many + 1 end display "the number of items counted = " how_many ''The same instructions'' were run ''continuously until it was stopped or interrupted'' . . . by the ''FALSE'' returned at some point by the function ''is_there_more_data''. By contrast, the following loop will not end by itself: birds = 1 fish = 2 while birds + fish > 1 do birds = 3 - bird ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instruction Pipeline
In computer engineering, instruction pipelining is a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. Pipelining attempts to keep every part of the processor busy with some instruction by dividing incoming Machine code, instructions into a series of sequential steps (the eponymous "Pipeline (computing), pipeline") performed by different Central processing unit#Structure and implementation, processor units with different parts of instructions processed in parallel. Concept and motivation In a pipelined computer, instructions flow through the central processing unit (CPU) in stages. For example, it might have one stage for each step of the von Neumann architecture, von Neumann cycle: Fetch the instruction, fetch the operands, do the instruction, write the results. A pipelined computer usually has "pipeline registers" after each stage. These store information from the instruction and calculations so that the logic gates of the next stage can do th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Processing Unit
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary Processor (computing), processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes Instruction (computing), instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, logic, controlling, and input/output (I/O) operations. This role contrasts with that of external components, such as main memory and I/O circuitry, and specialized coprocessors such as graphics processing units (GPUs). The form, CPU design, design, and implementation of CPUs have changed over time, but their fundamental operation remains almost unchanged. Principal components of a CPU include the arithmetic–logic unit (ALU) that performs arithmetic operation, arithmetic and Bitwise operation, logic operations, processor registers that supply operands to the ALU and store the results of ALU operations, and a control unit that orchestrates the #Fetch, fetching (from memory), #Decode, decoding and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Load-link/store-conditional
In computer science, load-linked/store-conditional (LL/SC), sometimes known as load-reserved/store-conditional (LR/SC), are a pair of instructions used in multithreading to achieve synchronization. Load-link returns the current value of a memory location, while a subsequent store-conditional to the same memory location will store a new value only if no updates have occurred to that location since the load-link. Together, this implements a lock-free, atomic, read-modify-write operation. "Load-linked" is also known as load-link, load-reserved, and load-locked. LL/SC was originally proposed by Jensen, Hagensen, and Broughton for the S-1 AAP multiprocessor at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Comparison of LL/SC and compare-and-swap If any updates have occurred, the store-conditional is guaranteed to fail, even if the value read by the load-link has since been restored. As such, an LL/SC pair is stronger than a read followed by a compare-and-swap (CAS), which will not de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compare-and-swap
In computer science, compare-and-swap (CAS) is an atomic instruction used in multithreading to achieve synchronization. It compares the contents of a memory location with a given (the previous) value and, only if they are the same, modifies the contents of that memory location to a new given value. This is done as a single atomic operation. The atomicity guarantees that the new value is calculated based on up-to-date information; if the value had been updated by another thread in the meantime, the write would fail. The result of the operation must indicate whether it performed the substitution; this can be done either with a simple boolean response (this variant is often called compare-and-set), or by returning the value read from the memory location (''not'' the value written to it), thus "swapping" the read and written values. Overview A compare-and-swap operation is an atomic version of the following pseudocode, where denotes access through a pointer: function cas(p: poin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fetch-and-add
In computer science, the fetch-and-add (FAA) CPU instruction atomically increments the contents of a memory location by a specified value. That is, fetch-and-add performs the following operation: increment the value at address by , where is a memory location and is some value, and return the original value at . in such a way that if this operation is executed by one process in a concurrent system, no other process will ever see an intermediate result. Fetch-and-add can be used to implement concurrency control structures such as mutex locks and semaphores. Overview The motivation for having an atomic fetch-and-add is that operations that appear in programming languages as are not safe in a concurrent system, where multiple processes or threads are running concurrently (either in a multi-processor system, or preemptively scheduled onto some single-core systems). The reason is that such an operation is actually implemented as multiple machine instructions: # load in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Test-and-set
In computer science, the test-and-set instruction is an instruction used to write (set) 1 to a memory location and return its old value as a single atomic (i.e., non- interruptible) operation. The caller can then "test" the result to see if the state was changed by the call. If multiple processes may access the same memory location, and if a process is currently performing a test-and-set, no other process may begin another test-and-set until the first process's test-and-set is finished. A central processing unit (CPU) may use a test-and-set instruction offered by another electronic component, such as dual-port RAM; a CPU itself may also offer a test-and-set instruction. A lock Lock(s) or Locked may refer to: Common meanings *Lock and key, a mechanical device used to secure items of importance *Lock (water navigation), a device for boats to transit between different levels of water, as in a canal Arts and entertainme ... can be built using an atomic test-and-set instructio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
