Memory Consistency: Basics and Models

This lecture covers the fundamentals of memory consistency, including the concepts of sequential consistency, relaxed models, and the relationship between memory coherence and consistency. It explains the order in which processors perform reads and writes to shared memory, the importance of hardware cache coherence, and the distinction between coherence and consistency. The lecture delves into examples illustrating cache-coherent executions, the challenges of modern CPUs reordering memory accesses, and the implementation of memory dependencies. It also discusses the implications of relaxed consistency models like Processor Consistency and Weak Consistency, highlighting the trade-offs between enforcing strict ordering and allowing more flexibility in memory operations.