Subj : Re: YALFAm (Yet Another Lock Free Approach, maybe)
To   : comp.programming.threads
From : Chris Thomasson
Date : Sun May 15 2005 05:04 am

> I have an idea about a 'mainly' lock free implementation that I'd 
> appreciate comments on.
> I'm attempting to solve the same sort of problem as Joe Seigh's atomic_ptr 
> (http://atomic-ptr-plus.sourceforge.net/), but in a way that will work on 
> win64 and win32 (so I want to avoid assembly and reliance on instructions 
> that are not present on some processors).

You can create a single-word atomic reference counted pointer with SMR that 
can outperform ( totally ia-32 specific ) atomic_ptr on x86; 'lock 
cmpxchg8b' can be expensive. SMR based reference counting doesn't have to 
rely on the hefty lock prefix on x86, it can use the "more" lightweight 
mfence instruction...

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

.