Re: [Caml-list] STM support in OCaml

[skaller <skaller@users.sourceforge.net>]

On Wed, 2006-03-08 at 16:11 -0600, Brian Hurt wrote:

> As to the cache comment: the whole caches don't have to be flushed, just 
> the line the mutex is on. 

Unfortunately that isn't correct ;( Consider:

	lock mutex

	read some data
	write back that data

	unlock mutex

The problem with two threads is that 'some data' has to
be invalidated too. Otherwise there
is no way existing Posix software would work on a
multi-processor.

I couldn't believe it! That's why we tried the experiment:
did the OS really invalidate the 'whole' caches, or did our
trivial increment program fail, because the memory being
incremented wasn't coherent?

Either answer is BAD: its a lose/lose situation. The result
is -- we got the right answers and the 15x slowdown which indicates
that yes, really the whole** cache on both processors is
being invalidated every mutex lock/unlock.

Interestingly .. it should work much better with a pure FPL,
there's nothing to synchronise unless the compiler did some
nasty optimisations like reusing a closure for self-tail-rec
functions, in which case the compiler could tell the OS
which store is dirty. I wouldn't expect that to work
with a C program though :)

-- 
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sourceforge dot net>
Async PL, Realtime software consultants
Checkout Felix: http://felix.sourceforge.net