Re: [boost] Boost.Thread project for GSoC 2014

Subject: Re: [boost] Boost.Thread project for GSoC 2014
From: Tim Blechmann (tim_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-03-08 18:58:26

>>>> No. But I can learn <atomic> quickly.
>>>> Is lock-free data structures going to be used a lot for this project?
>>> The work-stealing thread pool would have less contention if we use a
>>> lock-free dequeue. Of course, we can use Boost.LockFree if it provides
>>> already whatever we need.
>> actually, there are work-stealing queue data structures, with private
>> 'push'/'pop' and a public 'steal' function. i do have a prototype of a
>> textbook-implementation from herlihy/shavit, which is pretty efficient,
>> although it is bounded (the maximum number of elements has to be defined
>> in advance) and optimistic (under certain conditions a 'steal' operation
>> may fail).
> Thanks Tim for the info.
> I have not yet analyzed how a thread_pool could work with bounded queues.
> Do we want to block when the queue is full?

blocking is probably not a good idea, but one could use a global
dynamically-sized queue for jobs if the local work-stealing queue is full.
one might loose some properties regarding lock-freedom, though that is
not necessarily a porblem ...

>> it would make sense to integrate such a data structure into
>> boost.lockfree as part of a GSOC regarding a work-stealing thread-pool.
>>
>>
> If we found a consensus on what to do when the queue is full, yes this
> can be done during the GSoC project.

that would be wonderful!

cheers,
tim