Until now, transactional memory has been a technique best described as “experimental.” The theoretical gains—a simpler programming model that allows much greater concurrency than lock-based systems—are well-known, but practical (software-based) implementations have offset those gains due to their poor performance. Even IBM’s implementation is designed with an eye on experimentation to see if transactional memory is useful in practice. But with Intel planning to include the feature in a mainstream, mass-market processor, that changes: transactional memory will start being used for real. For parallel programmers, that’s an exciting prospect indeed.

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