The Google Code project does reference a technical paper on the implementation of the ring buffer, however it is a bit dry, academic and tough going for someone wanting to learn how it works. However there are some blog posts that have started to explain the internals in a more readable way. There is an … Read more
For performance gains modern CPUs often execute instructions out of order to make maximum use of the available silicon (including memory read/writes). Because the hardware enforces instructions integrity you never notice this in a single thread of execution. However for multiple threads or environments with volatile memory (memory mapped I/O for example) this can lead … Read more
Coroutines and concurrency are largely orthogonal. Coroutines are a general control structure whereby flow control is cooperatively passed between two different routines without returning. The ‘yield’ statement in Python is a good example. It creates a coroutine. When the ‘yield ‘ is encountered the current state of the function is saved and control is returned … Read more
In the simple case given, unlocking in the reverse order is not necessary to avoid a deadlock. However, as the code gets more complicated, unlocking in the reverse order helps you maintain proper lock ordering. Consider: A.lock(); B.lock(); Foo(); A.unlock(); Bar(); B.unlock(); If Bar() attempts to reacquire A, you’ve effectively broken your lock ordering. You’re … Read more
You can use GCD. It is a little more verbose than @synchronized, but works as a replacement: let serialQueue = DispatchQueue(label: “com.test.mySerialQueue”) serialQueue.sync { // code }
A lock allows only one thread to enter the part that’s locked and the lock is not shared with any other processes. A mutex is the same as a lock but it can be system wide (shared by multiple processes). A semaphore does the same as a mutex but allows x number of threads to … Read more