Subj : Re: Back-off?
To   : comp.programming.threads
From : SenderX
Date : Thu Mar 03 2005 08:32 pm

>I know the back-off is used to prevent the lock-free object from
> starvation in multi-processors.

A back-off is usually to prevent obstruction-free objects from livelock.



> But, is it also applicable to the
> uniprocessor? If the tasks are aperiodic in the uniprocessor, we need
> a sort of back-off scheme?

It depends. You don't really need a back-off scheme if your algorithm is 
livelock proof. You could use exponential back-off if the contending 
processors were very far apart to deal with latency. You could use _asm 
pause instructions for the failure path of a CAS in a loopbased algorithm. 
ect...


-- 
http://appcore.home.comcast.net/
(portable lock-free data-structures)

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