[boost] semi lock-free Signals/Slots

Subject: [boost] semi lock-free Signals/Slots
From: Andrew Ho (helloworld922_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-07-24 03:30:19

Hi, I've been doing some testing with implementing a semi lock-free 
Signals/Slots library.

Basically:

1. emits are lock-free thanks to atomic shared_ptr's/other atomic operations.
2. Only a single writer is allowed at a time, uses a mutex for locking.

The primary goal is to improve low and no slot-count signal emit performance.

In tests, I have been able to get substantial performance boosts (~2 to 5 
times) on low slot-count signals, approaching the same performance as signals2  
in low-contention (basically, single thread testing). I haven't tested high 
emit contention performance, though I suspect this library will excel quite 
well here because there is no locking on emit.

The test implementation is still incomplete, and notably uses many C++11 
features, though I don't think any of features I'm using can't be ported one 
way or another for C++03 support.

Even if the library isn't used in full, some of the ideas might be implemented 
into the existing Signals2 library.

link:
https://github.com/helloworld922/signals3