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Tweaking

Boost.Fiber enables synchronizing fibers running on different threads per default. This is acomblished on behalf of spinlocks (using atomics inside). (BOOST_FIBERS_SPINLOCK_STD_MUTEX applied at compiler's command line enables std::mutex instead of spinlocks).

disable synchronization

If synchronization between fibers (in different threads) is not desired, BOOST_FIBERS_NO_ATOMICS has to applied at compiler's command line.

TTAS locks
spin-wait loop

A lock is considered under high contention, if a lock is free, but a thread subsequently fails to acquire the lock because some other thread was faster. Waiting for a short time let other threads finish before trying to enter the critical section again. While busy waiting on the lock, relaxing the CPU (via pause/yield memnonic) gives the CPU a hint that the code is in a spin-wait loop.

- prevents expensive pipeline flushes (speculatively executed load and compare instructions not pushed to pipeline) - hardware thread (simultaneous multithreading) gets time slice - delay of few CPU cycles

It is obvious that this strategy is useless on single core systems because the lock can only released if the thread gives up its time slice in order to let other threads run. Macro BOOST_FIBERS_SPIN_SINGLE_CORE disables active spinning, e.g. der operating system is notified (via std::this_thread_yield()) that the thread gives up its time slice and the operating system switches to another thread. adaptive spin-wait loop

exponential back-off

Macro BOOST_FIBERS_SPIN_MAX_TESTS determines how many times the CPU gets the spin-wait loop hint before yielding the thread or blocking in futex-wait. The spinlock tracks how many time the thread failed to acquire the lock. The higher the contention, the longer the thread should back-off. 'Binary Exponential Backoff' algorithm together with a randomized contention window is utilized for this purpose. BOOST_FIBERS_SPIN_MAX_COLLISIONS determines the upper limit of collisions between threads after the thread waits on a futex

Table 1.3. macros for tweaking

BOOST_FIBERS_NO_ATOMICS

no multithreading, all atomics removed, no synchronization of fibers running in different threads

BOOST_FIBERS_SPINLOCK_STD_MUTEX

std::mutex used inside spinlock

BOOST_FIBERS_SPINLOCK_TTAS

spinlock with test-test-and-swap on shared variable

BOOST_FIBERS_SPINLOCK_TTAS_ADAPTIVE

spinlock with test-test-and-swap on shared variable, while busy waiting adaptive retries

BOOST_FIBERS_SPINLOCK_TTAS_FUTEX

spinlock with test-test-and-swap on shared variable, suspend on futex after certain amount of retries

BOOST_FIBERS_SPINLOCK_TTAS_ADAPTIVE_FUTEX

spinlock with test-test-and-swap on shared variable, while busy waiting adaptive retries, suspend on futex certain amount of retries

BOOST_FIBERS_SPIN_SINGLE_CORE

on single core machines with multiple threads, yield thread (std::this_thread::yield()) after collisions

BOOST_FIBERS_SPIN_MAX_TESTS

max amount of retries while busy spinning

BOOST_FIBERS_SPIN_MAX_COLLISIONS

max amount of collisions between contented threads



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