Lock-Free Search Data Structures: Throughput Modeling with Poisson Processes Aras Atalar Chalmers University of Technology, S-41296 Göteborg, Sweden
[email protected] Paul Renaud-Goud Informatics Research Institute of Toulouse, F-31062 Toulouse, France
[email protected] Philippas Tsigas Chalmers University of Technology, S-41296 Göteborg, Sweden
[email protected] Abstract This paper considers the modeling and the analysis of the performance of lock-free concurrent search data structures. Our analysis considers such lock-free data structures that are utilized through a sequence of operations which are generated with a memoryless and stationary access pattern. Our main contribution is a new way of analyzing lock-free concurrent search data structures: our execution model matches with the behavior that we observe in practice and achieves good throughput predictions. Search data structures are formed of basic blocks, usually referred to as nodes, which can be accessed by two kinds of events, characterized by their latencies; (i) CAS events originated as a result of modifications of the search data structure (ii) Read events that occur during traversals. An operation triggers a set of events, and the running time of an operation is computed as the sum of the latencies of these events. We identify the factors that impact the latency of such events on a multi-core shared memory system. The main challenge (though not the only one) is that the latency of each event mainly depends on the state of the caches at the time when it is triggered, and the state of caches is changing due to events that are triggered by the operations of any thread in the system.