CSC 456 Spring 2012/10b CP

Romanescu, Lebeck, and Sorin make a great point that "The most important feature of a computer is correct execution." Computers are expected to produce correct output consistently. Memory consistency -- the intentional ordering of all reads and writes to memory addresses (Solihin) -- plays a crucial role in guaranteeing that the results of running a program are the results intended by the programmer. Maintaining memory consistency is a problem on all multiprocessor machines (Solihin).

Performance

From best to worst: Weak Consistency Sequential Consistency Strict Consistency