Re: arm ldxr/stxr vs cas

jseigh wrote:

 I'm not so sure about making the memory lock granularity same as
cache line size but that's an implementation decision I guess.

Just make sure you never have multiple locks residing inside the same cache line!

 I do like the idea of detecting potential contention at the
start of LL/SC so you can do back off.  Right now the only way I
can detect contention is after the fact when the CAS fails and
I probably have the cache line exclusive at that point.  It's
pretty problematic.

I do prefer LOCK XADD instead of CAS (CmpXchg*), because the return value will also tell you which queue entry to pick/work on.
It will not be optimal when really contended, but at least one participant will make forward progress, and typically several of them.
Terje
--
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"