Increasing functionality of a reader-writer lock

• US 8,099,538 B2
• Filed: 03/29/2006
• Issued: 01/17/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 03/29/2006
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Saha, Bratin, Adl-Tabatabai, Ali-Reza
• Primary Examiner(s): Zaman, Faisal M
• Application Number:
  US11/392,381
• Publication Number:
  US 20070239915A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,120 Days
• Field of Search: 710/200, 711/152
• US Class Current: 710/200
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/145 the protection being virtual, e.g. for virtual blocks or segments before a translation mechanism
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4881 Scheduling strategies for dispatcher, e.g. round robin, multi-level priority queues
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/526 Mutual exclusion algorithms

Abstract

In one embodiment, the present invention includes a method for accessing a shared memory associated with a reader-writer lock according to a first concurrency mode, dynamically changing from the first concurrency mode to a second concurrency mode, and accessing the shared memory according to the second concurrency mode. In this way, concurrency modes can be adaptively changed based on system conditions. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

accessing a shared memory associated with a reader-writer lock according to a first concurrency mode;

maintaining a count of a number of accesses according to the first concurrency mode that abort, wherein the count is associated with a group of reader-writer locks including the reader-writer lock, the group corresponding to reader-writer locks accessed by a first thread of a plurality of threads;

dynamically changing from the first concurrency mode to a second concurrency mode based on a comparison between the count and a threshold, wherein the first concurrency mode comprises an optimistic concurrency mode in which the shared memo is accessed before the reader-writer lock is analyzed and the second concurrency mode comprises a pessimistic concurrency mode in which a write access to the shared memory is not permitted until the reader-writer lock is analyzed; and

accessing the shared memory according to the second concurrency mode.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising acquiring a read lock on the reader-writer lock before accessing the shared memory in the pessimistic concurrency mode.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein accessing the shared memory according to the first concurrency mode comprises accessing data of the shared memory without acquiring a lock on the reader-writer lock.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising determining whether a version number associated with the reader-writer lock at a commit time of an instruction matches the version number when the data was accessed.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

acquiring a read lock on the reader-writer lock;

upgrading the read lock to a write lock; and

writing data to the shared memory.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising writing an update indicator in a control portion of the reader-writer lock to upgrade the read lock.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising releasing the write lock after a transaction associated with the data commits.

8. The method of claim 5, further comprising writing a notify indicator in a control portion of the reader-writer lock via a first thread, the notify indicator to indicate that the first thread seeks notification after a writer has acquired and released the reader-writer lock, and inserting an identifier for the first thread in a notification list of multiple readers, wherein the notify indicator is idempotent for the multiple readers.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising writing indicator information in a control portion of the reader-writer lock and updating a count of readers in an identifier portion of the reader-writer lock.

10. An article comprising a machine-accessible medium including instructions that when executed cause a system to:

access data associated with a lock variable without acquiring the lock variable;

perform a transaction using the data;

commit the transaction if a value of the lock variable has not changed from the time of access to the time of commitment; and

otherwise, abort the transaction and increment a count of aborted transactions, wherein the count is associated with a group of lock variables including the lock variable, the group corresponding to lock variables accessed by a first thread of a plurality of threads executing on the system.

11. The article of claim 10, further comprising instructions that when, executed cause the system to dynamically change a mode of operation of the lock variable from an optimistic concurrency mode to a pessimistic concurrency mode based in part on the count.

12. The article of claim 11, further comprising instructions that when executed cause the system to set a mode indicator in a control portion of the lock variable to dynamically change the mode of operation.

13. The article of claim 10, further comprising instructions that when executed cause the system to upgrade a reader associated with the lock variable to a writer status.

14. The article of claim 13, further comprising instructions that when executed cause the system to set an upgrade indicator in a control portion of the lock variable to upgrade the reader.

15. A system comprising:

a processor to execute a first thread and a second thread; and

a transactional memory coupled to the processor, the transactional memory including a lock variable for a shared memory location, the lock variable to operate in a first concurrency mode or a second concurrency mode based upon a value of a mode indicator of the lock variable, wherein the lock variable further includes an upgrade indicator to indicate whether a reader seeks an upgrade to a writer status, wherein the reader is to atomically set the upgrade indicator only if the upgrade indicator is not currently set, a notification indicator to indicate whether the reader seeks notification after a writer has acquired and released the lock variable, and a reader indicator having a first state to indicate that a writer has acquired the lock variable and otherwise having a second state, and wherein the first thread is to abort a transaction if a value of the lock variable has changed from a time of access of the shared memo location b the first thread to a time of commitment of the transaction, and the system is to update a count of aborted transactions if the value of lock variable changed, the count associated with a group of lock variables including the lock variable accessed by the first thread and to dynamically switch from the first concurrency mode to the second concurrency mode based in part on the count.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the first concurrency mode comprises an optimistic concurrency mode and the second concurrency mode comprises a pessimistic mode, and wherein the first thread and the second thread can simultaneously acquire a read lock on the lock variable in the pessimistic mode.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the upgrade indicator is writeable by the first thread to upgrade a status of the first thread to the writer status.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the notify indicator is writeable by the first thread to request a notification of release of the lock variable by the second thread.