9.10 Shared Variables

Implementation Note: {AI05-0229-1} Independent addressability is the only high level semantic effect of aspect Pack. If two objects are independently addressable, the implementation should allocate them in such a way that each can be written by the hardware without writing the other. For example, unless the user asks for it, it is generally not feasible to choose a bit-packed representation on a machine without an atomic bit field insertion instruction, because there might be tasks that update neighboring subcomponents concurrently, and locking operations on all subcomponents is generally not a good idea.

{AI05-0229-1} Even if Pack or one of the other above-mentioned aspects is specified, subcomponents should still be updated independently if the hardware efficiently supports it. 

Ramification: {AI05-0009-1} {AI05-0201-1} {AI12-0001-1} An atomic object (including atomic components) is always independently addressable from any other nonoverlapping object. Aspect_specifications and representation items cannot change that fact. Note, however, that the components of an atomic object are not necessarily atomic. 

Ramification: Evaluating the entry_index of an accept_statement is not synchronized with a corresponding entry call, nor is evaluating the entry barrier of an entry_body.

Reason: The underlying principle here is that for one action to “signal” a second, the second action has to follow a potentially blocking operation, whose blocking is dependent on the first action in some way. Protected procedures are not potentially blocking, so they can only be "signalers," they cannot be signaled.

Ramification: Protected subprogram calls are not defined to signal one another, which means that such calls alone cannot be used to synchronize access to shared data outside of a protected object. 

Reason: The point of this distinction is so that on multiprocessors with inconsistent caches, the caches only need to be refreshed at the beginning of an entry body, and forced out at the end of an entry body or protected procedure that leaves an entry open. Protected function calls, and protected subprogram calls for entryless protected objects do not require full cache consistency. Entryless protected objects are intended to be treated roughly like atomic objects — each operation is indivisible with respect to other operations (unless both are reads), but such operations cannot be used to synchronize access to other nonvolatile shared variables. 

Reason: Any two actions of the same task are sequential, even if one does not signal the other because they can be executed in an “arbitrary” (but necessarily equivalent to some “sequential”) order. 

Reason: Because actions within protected actions do not always imply signaling, we have to mention them here explicitly to make sure that actions occurring within different protected actions of the same protected object are sequential with respect to one another (unless both are part of calls on protected functions). 

Ramification: It doesn't matter whether or not the variable being assigned is actually a subcomponent of the protected object; globals can be safely updated from within the bodies of protected procedures or entries. 

Ramification: If two actions are “sequential” it is known that their executions don't overlap in time, but it is not necessarily specified which occurs first. For example, all actions of a single task are sequential, even though the exact order of execution is not fully specified for all constructs. 

Discussion: Note that if two assignments to the same variable are sequential, but neither signals the other, then the program is not erroneous, but it is not specified which assignment ultimately prevails. Such a situation usually corresponds to a programming mistake, but in some (rare) cases, the order makes no difference, and for this reason this situation is not considered erroneous nor even a bounded error. In Ada 83, this was considered an “incorrect order dependence” if the “effect” of the program was affected, but “effect” was never fully defined. In Ada 95, this situation represents a potential nonportability, and a friendly compiler might want to warn the programmer about the situation, but it is not considered an error. An example where this would come up would be in gathering statistics as part of referencing some information, where the assignments associated with statistics gathering don't need to be ordered since they are just accumulating aggregate counts, sums, products, etc. 

{8652/0031} {AI95-00118-01} Corrigendum: Clarified that a task T2 can rely on values of variables that are updated by another task T1, if task T2 first verifies that T1'Terminated is True. 

{AI05-0009-1} {AI05-0201-1} Correction: Revised the definition of independent addressability to exclude conforming representation clauses and to require that atomic and independent objects always have independent addressability. This should not change behavior that the user sees for any Ada program, so it is not an inconsistency.

{AI05-0072-1} Correction: Corrected the wording of AI95-00118-01 to actually say what was intended (as described above).