Read-Copy-Update for HelenOS

Multicore processors have become prevalent and spurred interest in scalable synchronization mechanisms, such as Read-Copy Update. While RCU is popular in monolithic operating system kernels it has yet to see an implementation in a microkernel environment. In this thesis we design and implement RCU for the microkernel operating system HelenOS. Moreover, we explore potential uses of RCU in HelenOS and illustrate its utility in both the kernel and user space. Benchmarks demonstrate that the RCU implementation provides linearly scalable read-sides and incurs significantly less overhead than traditional locking even if uncontended. Furthermore, RCU was used in user space to speed up traditional locking 2.6 times in the common case. In the kernel, RCU ensured linear scalability of a previously non-scalable futex subsystem. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org