[boost] Lock-free atomic_shared_ptr<T>?

From: Jeffrey Yasskin (jyasskin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-01-18 12:56:50

Porting lock-free data structures from Java is complicated by the fact
that the implementations assume garbage collection. There are a few
techniques available for dealing with manual memory management without
locks, but they complicate the implementation of algorithms that are
complex enough already. So I'm thinking about trying to implement an
atomic_shared_ptr<T> along the lines of the interface for other
atomics defined in
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2007/n2427.html but
using shared_ptr<T> as a value type. The implementation I'm thinking
of uses hazard pointers
(http://erdani.org/publications/cuj-2004-12.pdf) and double-wide-cas
(cmpxchg16b on x86-64). So I have three questions for this list:

1) Would there be interest in adding such a type to the Boost smart pointers?
2) Has someone already done this?
3) Is anyone already working on an implementation of atomic<T> from
N2427? I'm unlikely to need the whole thing, so even a half-completed
public repository would be helpful.

Thanks,
Jeffrey Yasskin