Maurice P. Herlihy

Today most computing devices, such as smartphones, laptops, and servers, consist of multiple processors, often sharing memory. Processors execute concurrently, and must coordinate carefully to obtain correct results. Herlihy's work laid the foundation for what correctness of concurrent operations means by introducing the notion of linerizability He also introduced an abstraction, called transactional memory, which makes it easier for programmers to write correct concurrent software; IBM and Intel have incorporated transactional memory in current processors. He also developed an approach, called wait-free synchronization, for ensuring that data structure operations complete in a finite number of steps despite delays and failures, and characterized the architectural support needed to make such guarantees possible.