System and method for light weight task switching when a shared memory condition is signaled

Abstract

A system and method for using a handler to detect asynchronous lock line reservation lost events, and switching tasks based upon whether a condition is true or a mutex lock is acquired is presented. A synergistic processing unit (SPU) invokes a first thread and, during execution, the first thread requests external data that is shared with other threads or processors in the system. This shared data may be protected with a mutex lock or other shared memory synchronization constructs. When requested data is not available, the SPU switches to a second thread and monitors lock line reservation lost events in order to check when the data is available. When the data is available, the SPU switches back to the first thread and processes the first thread's request.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Technical Field [0002] The present invention relates in general to a system and method for lightweight task switching when a shared memory condition is signaled. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for using a handler to detect asynchronous lock line reservation lost events, and switching tasks based upon whether a condition is true or whether a processor acquires a mutex lock. [0003] 2. Description of the Related Art [0004] Computer applications typically run multiple threads to perform different tasks that request access to shared data. Common approaches to accessing shared data are 1) using a mutual exclusion (mutex) lock primitive or 2) using a condition wait primitive. [0005] A mutex lock allows multiple threads to “take turns” sharing the same resource, such as accessing a file. Typically, when a program starts, the program creates a mutex object for a given resource by requesting the resource from the s...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0010] A synergistic processing unit (SPU) invokes a first thread and, during execution, the first thread requests to update external data. The external data may be shared with other threads or processors in the system, which is protected by a mutex lock or other shared memory synchronization constructs. For example, the thread may request to update a linked data structure, which is protected by a mutex lock that prevents other threads or processors from traversing the linked data stru

Problems solved by technology

A challenge found with both mutex lock primitives and condition wait primitives is that system performance decreases when threads wait for d

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