Cache-Aware Lock-Free Queues for Multiple Producers/Consumers and Weak Memory Consistency

Abstract

A lock-free FIFO queue data structure is presented in this paper. The algorithm supports multiple producers and multiple consumers and weak memory models. It has been designed to be cache-aware and work directly on weak memory models. It utilizes the cache behavior in concert with lazy updates of shared data, and a dynamic lock-free memory management scheme to decrease unnecessary synchronization and increase performance. Experiments on an 8-way multi-core platform show significantly better performance for the new algorithm compared to previous fast lock-free algorithms.