Emanuel Couto (2009)

MSc Student

in

MSc dissertation: Speculative Execution by using Software Transactional Memory  
Co-adviser: Prof. Nuno Preguiça
Period: September 2008 — December 2009
Grade: 17/20

Abstract: Many programs sequentially execute operations that take a long time to complete. Some of these operations may return a highly predictable result. If this is the case, speculative execution can improve the overall performance of the program. Speculative execution is the execution of code whose result may not be needed. Generally it is used as a performance optimization. Instead of waiting for the result of a costly operation,speculative execution can be used to speculate the operation most probable result and continue executing based in this speculation. If later the speculation is confirmed to be correct, time had been gained. Otherwise, if the speculation is incorrect, the execution based in the speculation must abort and re-execute with the correct result. In this dissertation we propose the design of an abstract process to add speculative execution to a program by doing source-to-source transformation. This abstract process is used in the definition of a mechanism and methodology that enable programmer to add speculative execution to the source code of programs. The abstract process is also used in the design of an automatic source-to-source transformation process that adds speculative execution to existing programs without user intervention. Finally, we also evaluate the performance impact of introducing speculative execution in database clients. Existing proposals for the design of mechanisms to add speculative execution lacked portability in favor of performance. Some were designed to be implemented at kernel or hardware level. The process and mechanisms we propose in this dissertation can add speculative execution to the source of program, independently of the kernel or hardware that is used. From our experiments we have concluded that database clients can improve their performance by using speculative execution. There is nothing in the system we propose that limits in the scope of database clients. Although this was the scope of the case study, we strongly believe that other programs can benefit from the proposed process and mechanisms for introduction of speculative execution.