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Subject: Re: [boost] [lockfree] review
From: Dave Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-07-29 19:36:03


on Fri Jul 29 2011, Gordon Woodhull <gordon-AT-woodhull.com> wrote:

> On Jul 29, 2011, at 3:00 PM, Tim Blechmann wrote:
>>> IMO the big question with a library like this is not so much the design as
>>> the correctness. What can we do as reviewers to verify the correctness,
>>> assuming we are not lockfree gurus ourselves? Go back to the original
>>> sources. So I did; see below.
>>
>> well, there is one problem about the publications done by the lock-free gurus:
>> they don't care about the implementation, but assume a sequencially consistent
>> memory model, so they don't need to care about the required memory barriers or
>> the like ...
>
> Yes. Your rationale that the default options for atomic operations
> should ensure sequential consistency makes sense to me (from my
> limited experience).

Personally I never understood how sequential consistency could be much
of a help in reasoning about multithreaded programs... but that's just
me.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com

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