Paul Murphy about Transactional Memory

Paul has written an really interesting article about the implications of transctional memory:

The most obvious implication here is that Rock and its successors will allow Solaris kernel developers to make most these lock processes go away - and for applications that will initially mean simple re-compiles to take advantage of new libraries but in the longer term spark new designs eliminating many of the cycle absorbing complexities of present day multi-threading.

The effects to the performance of Solaris alone will be very interesting. Paul is right, there are many locks in Solaris and everything that speeds up the handling of locks and shortens the lost time by waiting of locks will be beneficial.