Simple Optimal Wait-free Multireader Registers

Abstract

Multireader shared registers are basic objects used as communication medium in asynchronous concurrent computation. We propose a surprisingly simple and natural scheme to obtain several wait-free constructions of bounded 1-writer multireader registers from atomic 1-writer 1-reader registers, that is easier to prove correct than any previous construction. Our main construction is the first symmetric pure timestamp one that is optimal with respect to the worst-case local use of control bits; the other one is optimal with respect to global use of control bits; both are optimal in time.