Subj : NPTL rwlock is really suboptimal
To   : comp.programming.threads
From : Joseph Seigh
Date : Thu Jan 27 2005 12:55 pm

It appears to give reader preference so if you have a lot of reader thread
activity, the writer threads starve, i.e. hang indefinitely.  rwlocks are
a strategy to reduce contention but if you have any kind of contention it
starves the writers.  You're better off using a mutex.

I'll have to see how Solaris rwlock handles this if I get around to porting
the atomic_ptr stuff to Solaris again.

-- 
Joe Seigh

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