We introduce a new synchronization problem called GRASP. We show that this problem is very general, in that it can provide solutions with strong properties to a wide make of previously-studied and new problems. We present a shared-memory solution to this problem that is based on a new solution to the dining philosophers problem with constant failure locality. We use the powerful tool of wait-free transactions to simplify our solution without restricting concurrency.

This paper presents a new solution to the group mutual exclusion problem recently posed by Joung. In this problem, processes repeatedly request access to various "sessions." It is required that distinct processes are not in different sessions concurrently, that multiple processes may be in the same session concurrently, and that each process that tries to enter a session is eventually able to do so. This problem is a generalization of the mutual exclusion and readers-writers problems. Our algorithm and its correctness proof are substantially simpler than Joung's. This simplicity is achieved by building upon known solutions to the more specific mutual exclusion problem. Our algorithm also has various advantages over Joung's, depending on the choice of mutual exclusion algorithm used. These advantages include admitting a process to its session in constant time in the absence of contention, spinning locally in Cache Coherent (CC) and Nonuniform Memory Access (NUMA) systems, and improvements in the complexity measures proposed by Joung.

This paper presents a new solution to the group mutual exclusion problem, recently posed by Joung. In this problem, processes repeatedly request access to various "sessions". It is required that distinct processes are not in different sessions concurrently, that multiple processes may be in the same session concurrently, and that each process that tries to enter a session is eventually able to do so. This problem is a generalization of the mutual exclusion and readers-writers problems. Our algorithm and its correctness proof are substantially simpler than Joung's. This simplicity is achieved by building upon known solutions to the more specific mutual exclusion problem. Our algorithm also has various advantages over Joung's, depending on the choice of mutual exclusion algorithm used. These advantages include admitting a process to its session in constant time in the absence of contention, spinning locally in Cache Coherent (CC) and Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) systems, an...