Subj : Re: Lock Free -- where to start
To   : comp.programming.threads
From : chris noonan
Date : Thu Oct 06 2005 01:29 pm


Oliver S. wrote:
> > And what would you do with tranactional memory?
> > Lock-free algorithms?
>
> Yes, but with transactional memory, they're *much* smarter. A lot of
> tricks aren't needed any more (f.e. aba-counters). And when you've got
> a timeout-implementation (which aren't necessary when you use transac-
> tional memory only between threads of the same process), lock-free
> processing is much more efficient than whith this idiotic (D)CAS-algo-
> rithms.

On the subject of ABA, I predict that this problem will be more
simply averted by the introduction into processor instruction sets
of atomic PUSH and POP. Atomic POP would copy into a register the
value at a memory location pointed to by another memory location
addressed by the instruction operand. It would simultaneously
decrement the contents of the latter memory location (i.e. the
pointer). Atomic PUSH the converse.

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