Title :
Scalable reader-writer locks for parallel systems
Author :
Hsieh, Wilson C. ; Weihl, William E.
Author_Institution :
Lab. for Comput. Sci., MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
Abstract :
Current algorithms for reader-writer synchronization do not scale for readers: readers cannot acquire locks in parallel. The authors describe two new algorithms that allow parallelism among readers during lock acquisition; this is achieved by distributing the lock state among different processors, and by trading reader throughput for writer throughput. Their experiments show that when reads are a large percentage of lock requests, the throughput of each of their algorithms scales significantly better than current algorithms
Keywords :
performance evaluation; shared memory systems; synchronisation; parallel systems; reader throughput; reader-writer synchronization; scalable reader-writer locks; shared memory multiprocessors; writer throughput; Computer science; Concurrent computing; Contracts; Costs; Heuristic algorithms; Laboratories; Parallel processing; Scalability; Testing; Throughput;
Conference_Titel :
Parallel Processing Symposium, 1992. Proceedings., Sixth International
Conference_Location :
Beverly Hills, CA
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-2672-0
DOI :
10.1109/IPPS.1992.222989
