Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Lock-Free Memory Reclamation by Erez Petrank

I've thought about doing some talks about Lock-Free Memory Reclamation, but Erez Petrank beat me to it. Even though I know a lot about the subject, I couldn't have done a better job myself (really, I couldn't), and lucky for you, his talks are online ;)
There are actually two talks, one is about Manual Lock-Free Memory Reclamation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aedEe0Zx_g0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCXrG1M65HU


The other is about Automatic Memory Reclamation sometimes called Garbage Collection:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9pbPpZXu18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nc7IqfshgQ

on this second one I learned a _lot_ because although Andreia and I are working on manual reclamation stuff so we know all the details he mentioned, on GC stuff I'm a bit clueless, except for the basic stuff. Both talks are really insightful and funny.
If you're looking for accurate and deep knowledge of memory reclamation, there is nothing better out there than these talks... except maybe a long chat with Erez himself  ;)


Here's my favorite quote by Erez Petrank:
(...) There are several papers which will tell you that there are Lock-Free Garbage Collectors. Do Not trust them! Some of them don't understand what Lock-Freedom is, some of them don't understand what Garbage Collection is, and some of them understand both but do not really look at the details.
GC progress is the big thing that no one looks at. They say: "Ok sure, I don't worry about the garbage collection, I only worry about the program and that is lock-free.", which is not ok, because if the garbage collection does not complete its operation, the program can not complete its operation because it can not allocate. (...)



1 comment:

  1. This article is unique and interesting. thanks for your share. I have been meaning to write something like this on my website and you have given me an idea.

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