Abstract
Lock-freedom offers significant advantages in terms of algorithm design, performance and scalability. A fundamental building block in software development is the usage of hash map data structures. This work extends a previous lock-free hash map to support a new simplified design that is able to take advantage of most state-of-the-art safe memory reclamation methods, thus outperforming the previous design.

Abstract
Prolog systems rely on an atom table for symbol management, which is usually implemented as a dynamically resizeable hash table. This is ideal for single threaded execution, but can become a bottleneck in a multi-threaded scenario. In this work, we replace the original atom table implementation in the YAP Prolog system with a lock-free hash-based data structure, named Lock-free Hash Tries (LFHT), in order to provide efficient and scalable symbol management. Being lock-free, the new implementation also provides better guarantees, namely, immunity to priority inversion, to deadlocks and to livelocks. Performance results show that the new lock-free LFHT implementation has better results in single threaded execution and much better scalability than the original lock based dynamically resizing hash table.

Abstract
Lock-free data structures are an important tool for the development of concurrent programs as they provide scalability, low latency and avoid deadlocks, livelocks and priority inversion. However, they require some sort of additional support to guarantee memory reclamation. The Optimistic Access (OA) method has most of the desired properties for memory reclamation, but since it allows memory to be accessed after being reclaimed, it is incompatible with the traditional memory management model. This renders it unable to release memory to the memory allocator/operating system, and, as such, it requires a complex memory recycling mechanism. In this paper, we extend the lock-free general purpose memory allocator LRMalloc to support the OA method. By doing so, we are able to simplify the memory reclamation method implementation and also allow memory to be reused by other parts of the same process. We further exploit the virtual memory system provided by the operating system and hardware in order to make it possible to release reclaimed memory to the operating system.

Abstract
Tabled evaluation is a recognized and powerful technique that overcomes some limitations of traditional Prolog systems in dealing with recursion and redundant sub-computations. During tabled execution, several decisions have to be made. These are determined by the scheduling strategy. Whereas a strategy can achieve very good performance for certain applications, for others it might add overheads and even lead to unacceptable inefficiency. The two most successful tabling scheduling strategies are local scheduling and batched scheduling. In previous work, we have developed a framework, on top of the Yap system, that supports the combination of different linear tabling strategies for local scheduling. In this work, we propose the extension of our framework, to support batched scheduling. In particular, we are interested in the two most successful linear tabling strategies, the DRA and DRE strategies. To the best of our knowledge, no single tabling Prolog system supports both strategies simultaneously for batched scheduling.

Abstract

Abstract