Seven aspects of software transactional memory

This paper explores different aspects of transactional memory to identify general patterns and analyze what direction software transactional memory research may be headed. Hybrid hardware-accelerated transactional memory is shown as a better long-term solution than purely software or hardware transactional memory, based on performance and the fundamental issue of software complexity. The appendix provides a chronologically ordered summary of significant transactional memory implementations and transactional memory specific benchmarks.