regular semantics

Regular semantics is a term which describes the guarantees provided by a data register shared by several processors in a parallel machine or in a network of computers working together. Atomic semantics are defined formally in Lamport's "On Interprocess Communication" Distributed Computing 1, 2 (1986), 77-101. (Also appeared as SRC Research Report 8). Regular semantics are defined for a variable with a single writer but multiple readers. These semantics are stronger than safe semantics but weaker than atomic semantics: they guarantee that there is a total order to the write operations which is consistent with real-time and that read operations return either the value of the last completed write or that of one of the writes which are concurrent with the read.

Regular Semantics

See also