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Date:      Fri, 31 Jan 1997 09:43:51 -0500 (EST)
From:      "Ron G. Minnich" <rminnich@Sarnoff.COM>
To:        Andrew.Gordon@net-tel.co.uk
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Re(2): Using rfork() / threads
Message-ID:  <Pine.SUN.3.91.970131093856.16303C-100000@terra>
In-Reply-To: <"40b1-970131030103-8AD9*/G=Andrew/S=Gordon/O=NET-TEL Computer Systems Ltd/PRMD=NET-TEL/ADMD=Gold 400/C=GB/"@MHS>

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well, i have another thing that was (ah well) offered to freebsd called 
fastlock(). Fastlock was two things: 
1) test and set, which ran at memory bandwidth
2) a system call to be called only if the lock failed, 
   which ran at system call speeds. 

Fastlock is called with a pointer to shared data. In the general case
locks do not collide. So the cost of fastlock is the cost of a tset.  In
the case of collision, the high-order bit was set (tset(mem, 0x80000000)
and the fastlock system call was called. The process waiting on the lock then
slept. 

The owner of the lock can do one of two things when it frees the lock: 
1) if no collide (mem&0x80000000 == 0), just clear the lock
2) otherwise, clear the lock and call a system call which wakes up the first
   sleeper on the lock. 

End result: very very fast locks, quite a bit faster than anything else.

ron

Ron Minnich                |"Failure is not an option" -- Gene Kranz
rminnich@sarnoff.com       | -- except, of course, on Microsoft products
(609)-734-3120             |
ftp://ftp.sarnoff.com/pub/mnfs/www/docs/cluster.html 





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