[Haskell-cafe] Software Transactional Memory and LWN

[Ketil Malde]

Hi,

Browsing LWN, I ran across this comment:

http://lwn.net/Articles/336039/

The author makes a bunch of unsubstantiated claims about STM, namely
that all implementations use locking under the hood, and that STM can
live- and deadlock.  I've seen a lot of similar sentiments in other
places as well (comp.arch springs to mind).

Now, I'm no expert on STM, but I was pretty sure these are incorrect,
and I certainly had the impression that Haskell's STM guarantees some
progress - which it couldn't in a deadlock situation.

Am I wrong?

-k
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants