Project description
LFthreads is a thread library whose synchronization is entirely
based on lock-free techniques, which means that no spin-locks
or similar synchronization mechanisms are employed in the
implementation of the multithreading. This implies that
processors are always able to do useful work and is achieved by
a new synchronization mechanism that does not need any special
kernel support. Since lock-freeness is highly desirable in
multiprocessors due to its advantages in performance,
fault-tolerance, convoy- and deadlock-avoidance, there is an
increased demand in lock-free methods in multiprocessor
applications, hence also in multiprocessor system
services. This is why the existence of a lock-free
multithreading library is important.
See also the group's related projects:
NBmalloc, a non-blocking memory
allocator,
NOBLE, a software library
of lock-free shared data objects,
WARPing,
Lockless-Spark98 and
Lockless-MiniSPLASH2.
More information will be added as this project progresses.
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Availability
The source code of LFthreads is currently not ready for
publication. LFthreads is expected to be released in due time under the
GNU
General Public License (GNU GPL).
If you are interested in the source code of our implementation at this
time send a request to me.
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Publications
-
LFthreads: A lock-free thread library or
"Blocking without locking",
Anders Gidenstam and Marina Papatriantafilou,
Technical Report 2005:20, Computer Science and Engineering,
Chalmers University of technology, 2005.
-
Efficient and Reliable Lock-Free Memory Reclamation Based on
Reference Counting,
Anders Gidenstam, Marina Papatriantafilou, Håkan Sundell and
Philippas Tsigas,
Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Parallel
Architectures, Algorithms, and Networks (I-SPAN 2005),
pages 202 - 207,
IEEE Computer Society, 2005.
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