WEAK ATOMICITY - A HELPFUL NOTION IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF ATOMIC SHARED VARIABLES

A new class of 1-writer shared variables, called weakly atomic variabl es, is defined, and an elegant general method of constructing atomic v ariables from weakly atomic ones is presented in this paper. Four exam ples of atomic variable constructions that use this method are describ ed. Two of these constructions are new. Weak atomicity provides an int ermediate step between regularity and atomicity. In addition to enabli ng new constructions, this concept helps to derive simple correctness proofs of the constructions.