LFthreads: A lock-free thread library or "Blocking without locking"
Report, 2005

This paper presents LFthreads, a thread library whose synchronization is entirely based on lock-free techniques, which means that no spin-locks or similar synchronization mechanisms are employed in the implementation of the multithreading. This implies that processors are always able to do useful work and is achieved by a new synchronization mechanism that does not need any special kernel support. Since lock-freeness is highly desirable in multiprocessors due to its advantages in performance, fault-tolerance, convoy- and deadlock-avoidance, there is an increased demand in lock-free methods in multiprocessor applications, hence also in multiprocessor system services. This is why the existence of a lock-free multithreading library is important. To the best of our knowledge LFthreads is the first thread library that provides a lock-free blocking synchronization primitive for application threads.

shared memory

synchronization

lock-free

multithreading

Author

Anders Gidenstam

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computing Science (Chalmers)

Marina Papatriantafilou

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computing Science (Chalmers)

Subject Categories

Computer Science

Technical report - Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology and Göteborg University: 2005:20

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Created

10/7/2017