Experiments with Configurable Locks for Multiprocessors

Operating system kernels typically offer a fixed set of mechanisms and primitives. However, recent research shows that the attainment of high performance for a variety of parallel applications may require the availability of variants of existing primitives or additional low-level mechanisms. One approach to solve this problem is to offer a lightweight, reconfigurable and extensible operating system kernel. An application may configure it to suit its needs, including the selection of appropriate low-level policies, the construction of new primitives on top of the existing ones or the extension with additional primitives. In this paper, we investigate kernel configurability and extensibility for a specific class of operating system primitives: those used for task or thread synchronization. We present an implementation of multiprocessor locks that can be reconfigured statically and dynamically. In addition, we develop a representation for the lock abstraction and an associated reconfiguration mechanism that may be used for the development of other configurable and extensible operating system abstractions