ABA problem

English

Etymology

ABA represents the change in value of a memory location from A to B and back to A.

Noun

ABA problem (uncountable)

1. (computing) In multithreaded computing, a case in which a program erroneously considers the equality of a variable at two times to mean it has never changed in between.
   • 2010, Damian Dechev, Peter Pirkelbauer, Bjarne Stroustrup, “Understanding and Effectively Preventing the ABA Problem in Descriptor-Based Lock-Free Designs”, in ISORC 2010 - 2010 13th IEEE International Symposium on Object/Component/Service-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing:

     The ABA problem is a fundamental problem to many CAS-based nonblocking designs.

Further reading

• ABA problem on Wikipedia.Wikipedia