Partitioned ticket locks with semi-local spinning

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9158596-B2
Application number	US-201113051877-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 18, 2011
Priority date	Mar 18, 2011
Publication date	Oct 13, 2015
Grant date	Oct 13, 2015

Abstract

A partitioned ticket lock may control access to a shared resource, and may include a single ticket value field and multiple grant value fields. Each grant value may be the sole occupant of a respective cache line, an event count or sequencer instance, or a sub-lock. The number of grant values may be configurable and/or adaptable during runtime. To acquire the lock, a thread may obtain a value from the ticket value field using a fetch-and-increment type operation, and generate an identifier of a particular grant value field by applying a mathematical or logical function to the obtained ticket value. The thread may be granted the lock when the value of that grant value field matches the obtained ticket value. Releasing the lock may include computing a new ticket value, generating an identifier of another grant value field, and storing the new ticket value in the other grant value field.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method, comprising:
performing, by a computer:
initiating execution of a thread, wherein the thread is one of a plurality of executing threads that access a shared resource;
the thread attempting to acquire a partitioned ticket lock that controls access to the shared resource, wherein the partitioned ticket lock comprises a single ticket value field and a plurality of grant value fields, wherein for at least one of the plurality of grant value fields tw…

Assignees

• Dice David
• Oracle Int Corp

Inventors

• Dice David

Classifications

• G06F9/526 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F2209/522

  Physics · mapped topic