Are Lock-Free Concurrent Algorithms Practically Wait-Free? — mentioned by thmt

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 07:40:53 GMT

Alistarh et al. (https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.3200) show that assuming we have a kinder, non-malicious scheduler, the situation looks even better: lock-free (some process can make progress) algorithms have a stronger progress property of being wait-free (every process can make progress). As omazurov mentioned as a top-level comment, threads can also die, which is rather like never being scheduled. In practice, I suspect that you're right that it's often too extreme of a model—many programs use locks and don't worry too much about this issue.

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Are Lock-Free Concurrent Algorithms Practically Wait-Free? · HackerPapers discussions

Are Lock-Free Concurrent Algorithms Practically Wait-Free? — mentioned by thmt