Re: [Boost-users] [Review] Lockfree review starts today, July 18th

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] [Review] Lockfree review starts today, July 18th
From: Bill Buklis (boostusr_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-07-18 12:51:49

On 7/18/2011 9:51 AM, Klaim - Joël Lamotte wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 15:32, Hartmut Kaiser 
> <hartmut.kaiser_at_[hidden] <mailto:hartmut.kaiser_at_[hidden]>> wrote:
>
>     - What is your evaluation of the documentation?
>
>
> Just a minor request so far :
>
> If I remember correctly (and I might be very wrong as my memory is 
> really not clear on this point), the presentation at boostcon started 
> by explaining why lockfree data structures should be used only in last 
> resort or something like that.
>
> Maybe a documentation page with such explainations would help the user 
> know if it there are better solutions for their cases? I read that the 
> main purpose is comunication between threads.
>
> Joël Lamotte
>

One case where I use a lock-free data structure is with high performance 
network communications in which the client app receives tremendous 
amounts of data. The app has a thread dedicated to receiving data and 
another thread dedicated to processing the data. It uses a fixed size 
lock-free circular buffer to hold the data. In terms of boost::lockfree, 
this would be akin to the fifo queue. Using a circular queue prevents 
memory allocations, but does limit the amount of stored data making it 
critical that the processing thread reasonably keep up. Having a 
lock-free data structure definitely helps with performance.

I haven't looked at boost::lockfree yet, but I'm very curious to know 
how the fifo queue compares. Perhaps adding a circular queue version to 
lockfree would be beneficial. The implementation is fairly trivial. I 
don't even use atomic operations for it (at least on Windows). Although 
perhaps they may be needed for other platforms.

-- 
Bill