RFR(s): 8150460: (linux|bsd|aix)_close.c: file descriptor table may become large or may not work at all

Thomas Stüfe thomas.stuefe at gmail.com
Thu Mar 3 09:32:19 UTC 2016


Hi Hans,

On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 4:08 AM, Hans Boehm <hboehm at google.com> wrote:

>
> On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 12:09 AM, Thomas Stüfe <thomas.stuefe at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Hans,
> >
> > thanks for the hint!
> >
> > But how would I do this for my problem:
> >
> > Allocate memory, zero it out and then store the pointer into a variable
> seen by other threads, while preventing the other threads from seeing . I
> do not understand how atomics would help: I can make the pointer itself an
> atomic, but that only guarantees memory ordering in regard to this
> variable, not to the allocated memory.
> >
> > Kind Regards, Thomas
>
> C11 atomics work essentially like Java volatiles: They order other memory
> accesses as well.  If you declare the pointer to be atomic, and store into
> it, then another thread reading the newly assigned value will also see the
> stores preceding the pointer store.  Since the pointer is the only value
> that can be accessed concurrently by multiple threads (with not all
> accesses reads), it's the only object that needs to be atomic.  In this
> case, it's sufficient to store into the pointer with
>
> atomic_store_explicit(&ptr, <new_value>, memory_order_release);
>
> and read it with
>
> atomic_load_explicit(&ptr, memory_order_acquire);
>
> which are a bit cheaper.
>
>
However, this is C11 specific, and I don't know whether that's acceptable
> to use in this context.
>
> If you can't assume C11, the least incorrect workaround is generally to
> make the pointer volatile, precede the store with a fence, and follow the
> load with a fence.  On x86, both fences just need to prevent compiler
> reordering.
>


Thank you for that excellent explanation!

This may be just my ignorance, but I actually did not know that atomics are
now a part of the C standard. I took this occasion to look up all other C11
features and this is quite neat :) Nice to see that C continues to live.

I am very hesitant though about introducing C11 features into the JDK. We
deal with notoriously oldish compilers, especially on AIX, and I do not
want to be the first to force C11, especially not on such a side issue.

The more I look at this, the more I think that the costs for a pthread
mutex lock are acceptable in this case: we are about to do a blocking IO
operation anyway, which is already flanked by two mutex locking calls (in
startOp and endOp). I doubt that a third mutex call will be the one making
the costs suddenly unacceptable. Especially since they can be avoided
altogether for low value mutex numbers (the optimization Roger suggested).

I will do some performance tests and check whether the added locking calls
are even measurable.

Thomas



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