Scalable Synchronization with Mindicators

Abstract

The Mindicator is a shared object that stores one value for each thread in a system, and can return the minimum of all thread’s values in constant time. In this paper, we explore applications of the Mindicator in synchronization algorithms. We introduce three new algorithms, designed for scalable Read-Copy-Update (RCU), fair Readers-Writer locking, and Group Mutual Exclusion. Experimental evaluation shows these algorithms to perform well while avoiding contention