Exploring the Efficiency of Multi-Word Compare-and-Swap

Concurrent data structures and algorithms are becoming more relevant with the increase of the number of cores in multicore processors. Designing these algorithms is still hard and limited by necessary hardware support. Modern processors support basic atomic primitives, e.g. Compare-and-Swap atomic instruction. These primitives are powerful enough to implement any concurrent data structure in a lock-free manner. However, this is not always easy. Multi-Word CAS can help with developing efficient lock-free algorithms. This thesis describes several MCAS-based data structures and algorithms and presents a benchmarking suite for the newly developed hardware MCAS atomic instructions (double, triple and quadruple CAS)