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Groups > comp.lang.c++ > #122473
| From | cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) |
|---|---|
| Newsgroups | comp.lang.c++ |
| Subject | Re: fun with a mutex... |
| Date | 2025-08-06 11:29 +0000 |
| Organization | PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC |
| Message-ID | <106veb1$eha$1@reader1.panix.com> (permalink) |
| References | <106cc2f$31ti3$1@dont-email.me> <106u31a$31k65$2@dont-email.me> <106u86u$t1c$1@reader1.panix.com> <106udpt$3400b$1@dont-email.me> |
In article <106udpt$3400b$1@dont-email.me>, Chris M. Thomasson <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote: >On 8/5/2025 5:38 PM, Dan Cross wrote: >> In article <106u31a$31k65$2@dont-email.me>, >> Chris M. Thomasson <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote: >>> On 8/5/2025 12:27 AM, Muttley@DastardlyHQ.org wrote: >>>> On Mon, 4 Aug 2025 12:34:08 -0700 >>>> "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wibbled: >>>>> [snip] >>>>> This already works with multiple threads, no problem. But, if a thread >>>>> fails to acquire the mutex, it can check to see if it has any other work >>>>> to do instead of just waiting in the kernel doing nothing, or spinning >>>>> doing nothing... Make sense to you? >> >> The idea behind what you're trying to do is well-understood. >> >> In fact, this is what generally happens when you try to acquire >> a contended, blocking mutex: if the mutex is currently locked by >> some other thread, you mark the acquiring thread as blocked >> waiting on the mutex, and then yield control back to a scheduler >> or something; eventually the other thread will finish what it >> was doing and release the mutex, but part of releasing the mutex >> and making it available again is marking threads that were >> blocked on it runnable, thus opening them up to be scheduled >> again, where they can once again try to acquire the mutex. >> >> The twist here seems to be that, instead of immediately >> yielding, for some bounded number of times, you look at a work >> queue and try to find something else for the acquiring thread to >> do while the lock you want is unavailable. Regardless, the >> effect is more or less the same. >> >> Personally, I see little benefit, and a number of potential >> pitfalls. In particular, I see no reason why the bundled bits >> of work in this scheme can't cause any number of lock ordering >> violations and lead to all sorts of deadlock scenarios. Suppose >> for example, that I acquire some mutex, A, and then go to >> acquire a second mutex, B: B is currently held by some other >> thread, so I begin to spin, but I see that there is an item in >> my work queue, so I go to do that. The first thing that work >> item does is try to acquire mutex A, which I'm currently >> holding, leading to deadlock against A. >> >> One could perhaps assert that these work items are not allowed >> to take or hold locks, which could address this particular >> failure mode, but it's unclear how one might enforce this in >> general, and there may well be other, similar failure modes. >> >>>>> [snip] >>>>> The idea is instead of letting it wait, why not let it try to do some >>>>> other work? Think of an adaptive mutex. On contention it will spin for a >>>>> bounded number of times in user space before having to wait in the >>>>> kernel. Well, instead of spinning, try to do something else, some real >>>>> work? It will keep the thread hot, doing work instead of just waiting... >>>> >>>> Because while its doing something else the lock maybe become free then >>>> become acquired again leading to a kind of race condition of some threads >>> >>> Nope. A thread can only do something else for a bounded number of times. >>> So, its starvation free. No race condition. >> >> This is simply not true. Suppose that the "something else" is >> computationally intensive, or blocks the thread somehow (say, by >> executing a blocking system call). > >This is where try to do other work, well. Also, this is where the >nightmare condition can occur. Try to do other work, non-blocking. If you are talking about some kind of general mechanism, how would you even know in advance what the "something else" is? >Say >trying to take a IOCP completion using a timeout of zero? If we got >data, we add it to a local queue or something. No blocking. You're talking about Win32, consider how `GetQueuedCompletionStatus` might be implemented. You may well be taking a round-trip through the kernel to do that, which is very expensive compared to, say, incrementing a register. >> What if the "something else" >> just spins in an infinte loop, waiting for some event? Just >> because you bound the number of times you do "something else" >> does not mean you are free of starvation, because what the other >> thing actual does matters. > >No. If there is no other work to do, it falls back to lock(). If if did >too much work, it falls back to lock. You're missing the point: there's no good way to determine whether _any_ amount of work is "too much". - Dan C.
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fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-07-29 22:54 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-02 12:58 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-02 13:00 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Muttley@DastardlyHQ.org - 2025-08-04 08:48 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-04 12:34 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Muttley@DastardlyHQ.org - 2025-08-05 07:27 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-05 16:10 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-06 00:38 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-05 19:14 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-06 11:29 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-06 15:43 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-08 01:41 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-07 20:52 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-05 19:16 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-06 12:04 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-06 15:47 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-08 01:49 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-07 20:59 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-09 09:17 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-09 11:52 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-09 16:08 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-09 10:48 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-10 03:08 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-11 13:37 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-13 11:41 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-15 17:28 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-18 20:25 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-18 13:34 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-18 20:39 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-18 14:06 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-18 14:28 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-18 14:33 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-18 22:56 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-18 16:09 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-18 23:44 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-18 16:55 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-18 23:57 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-19 13:25 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-15 17:30 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-18 20:26 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-18 13:39 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-18 20:44 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-18 14:08 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-18 16:11 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-18 16:20 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-11 11:04 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-11 13:30 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-12 10:23 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-12 01:31 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-12 10:39 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-12 01:45 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-12 10:56 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-12 02:14 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-12 15:08 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-15 21:36 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-16 10:13 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-16 01:56 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-16 11:05 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-16 13:31 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-17 14:50 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-17 13:43 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-13 11:45 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-13 19:07 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-08-13 17:31 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-15 10:00 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-13 12:41 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-09 10:44 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-09 11:00 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Fred. Zwarts" <F.Zwarts@HetNet.nl> - 2025-08-05 10:27 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-05 16:07 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Fred. Zwarts" <F.Zwarts@HetNet.nl> - 2025-08-06 10:56 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-06 15:36 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-04 12:38 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Muttley@DastardlyHQ.org - 2025-08-05 07:29 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-05 16:08 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-06 15:51 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-06 15:34 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-07 06:44 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-07 12:17 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-07 21:51 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-07 12:52 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-16 11:21 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-16 13:22 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-17 03:59 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-16 23:53 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2025-08-17 10:37 +0200
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-07 12:32 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-08-08 01:51 +0000
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-07 21:01 -0700
Re: fun with a mutex... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2025-08-07 21:08 -0700
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