Since upgrading Boost from 1.3.4 to 1.3.5, mutex operations have displayed dramatically worse performance. After some profiling it was discovered that the change to derive all mutexes from basic_timed_mutex is the cause. We use the mutexes almost exclusively with scoped lock. We have no need for a timed mutex and simply need a regular mutex for simple resource / memory protection between threads.

 

The basic_timed_mutex seems to do an awful lot of working in its constructor, calling various Gregorian date functions, calendar functions, xtime functions doing comparisons etc. This has lead to an approximate 5% performance loss for our performance sensitive application on the Win32 platform.

 

Is there a way to disable this heavy weight basic_timed_mutex, and use a plain old regular mutex ? Are the Boost Threads library maintainers aware of the performance penalties from using timed mutex for Windows platforms?

 

Simon