microsoft / microsoft/STL

<mutex>: change mutex to be an SRWLOCK

Open
#946 6 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

performance vNext
Dominant language
C++
Stars
11.1k
Forks
1.7k
Avg merge
4d 15h
Merged PRs (30d)
22

Description

Description
std::mutex is currently powered by ConcRT to support Windows XP. As a result the size of mutex is too big to fit in a cache line.

When XP support can be dropped, the size can be reduced to sizeof(void*) by changing mutex to be an SRWLOCK, which is the highest performance lock provided by Windows.

Semi-duplicate description

  • From #654 <mutex>: Implement mutex and recursive_mutex on SRW Lock. Support recursion only on recursive_mutex
    • correctness (constexpr construction)
    • no undesired strengthening (recursion on non-recursive deliberately not behaving correctly)
    • performance (no dynamic API binding => no control flow guard overhead; no recursion support overhead)

Additional context
See also: Developer Community DevCom-334696 and Microsoft-internal VSO-685103 / AB#685103.

vNext note: Resolving this issue will require breaking binary compatibility. We won't be able to accept pull requests for this issue until the vNext branch is available. See #169 for more information.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the <mutex> implementation and the vNext guidance in #169; the issue names no source file or test. Work is gated on the vNext branch, and done means using SRWLOCK while preserving constexpr construction, limiting recursion to recursive_mutex, and accepting the stated binary-compatibility break.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
operating-systems
Issue type
Refactor
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.