Re: [boost] GSOC 2015 : Project on Concurrent Hash Tables

Subject: Re: [boost] GSOC 2015 : Project on Concurrent Hash Tables
From: Amarnath V A (me_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-02-24 07:00:30

Niall,

Thanks for the reply. Sorry for late replay as I am caught up with some
assignments and examinations right now.

I have coded the move constructor and move assignment operator. I am not
sure how good the code is. (Again, let me reiterate I am new to C++11).
Will have some time to look at that? Should I share it here in the lists or
should I send you a private mail?

On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 9:35 PM, Niall Douglas <s_sourceforge_at_[hidden]>
wrote:

> On 15 Feb 2015 at 19:24, Amarnath V A wrote:
>
> > 1. I could not make out the use of _oldbuckets in the code. What purpose
> > does it serve?
>
> Implementing a thread safe rehash of a concurrent unordered map is
> tricky without losing a lot of performance. The assumption is that
> rehashing is infrequent, so to rehash we mark all old buckets as
> being "dead and please go reload the bucket list" and push the old,
> now emptied bucket list into a FIFO queue such that it hangs around
> for a while to make sure all threads currently using it get a chance
> to spot that it is now dead, and to reload the bucket list.
>
> Purists wil remark this isn't 100% thread safe if you rehash
> frequently enough. Correct, but it's good for 1000 rehashs per second
> for a 24 hour soak test on ARMv7 and Intel. The unit testing tests
> 100 rehashs per second for a period as a quick smoke test.
>
> In real world code, as rehashing is manual, simply don't rehash more
> than once a second. This is mentioned in bold font in the class
> documentation.
>
> > 2. I see a swap() function which is not used anywhere in the codebase. Is
> > it dead code?
>
> Consider it untested inspirational code which may or may not be
> correct.
>
> > 3. And I have a generic question regarding std::atomic. I was trying to
> > code the move constructor and finally ended up failing miserably to move
> > the reference of _bucket. I could not figure out how to do it. Could you
> > point me to some documentation which would help me to achieve the same.
>
> You might have a hint now above about what to do with old buckets.
>
> > To give a fair idea about my last question, let me elaborate what I was
> > trying to do. I have got the reference of _buckets and have assigned it
> to
> > new variable using store and load methods of atomic. But, I am not
> > confident if that is the right way to go about. And secondly, I see that
> I
> > am not able to reset the reference of original.
>
> For thread safety to be present, you can never relocate a bucket in
> memory after its construction, otherwise threads using it would see
> memory vanish out from underneath them during use. That is what
> oldbuckets is for.
>
> Niall
>
> --
> ned Productions Limited Consulting
> http://www.nedproductions.biz/
> http://ie.linkedin.com/in/nialldouglas/
>
>
>
>
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