Re: shared_ptr from dinkumware ... comments??

From:
"James Kanze" <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
25 Oct 2006 08:48:25 -0400
Message-ID:
<1161774824.698346.301340@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
Chris Thomasson wrote:

[...]

Reference counting requires cas, which isn't present in Sparc


You can implement shared_ptr, or full-blown atomically
thread-safe counted pointers with swap and fetch-and-add...
Like I did here:

http://appcore.home.comcast.net/vzoom/refcount/


I found two errors in your assembler code in the first five
minutes looking at it. You are basically using a spin lock,
which can deadlock if real time thread scheduling is in effect.
And even in the spin lock, you forgot a lock prefix on the exch
instruction, which means that it isn't atomic, and two threads
can enter the critical section at the same time.

If you do find a lock-free implementation of full reference
counted pointers which only needs an atomic swap, you would do
well to publish it in a refereed journal, like the CACM, because
it is generally considered impossible.

For the rest, the moderator is correct: this is no longer on
topic, and further discussion should be
comp.programming.threads. The problem isn't C++, it's a
question of the hardware support needed for certain operations.

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