Binary snapshots

Abstract

This paper considers the shared memory wait-free atomic snapshot object in its simplest form where each cell contains a single bit. We demonstrate the ‘universality’ of this binary snapshot object by presenting an efficient linear-time implementation of the general multibit atomic snapshot object using an atomic binary snapshot object as a primitive. Thus, the search for an efficient (subquadratic or linear time) wait-free atomic snapshot implementation may be restricted to the binary case.