lstallone / dataprotector

A C++ class to protect data that is read frequently in a multi-threaded program without using locks.

Lockfree protection of data structures that are frequently read

by Max Neunhoeffer and Jan Steemann

In multi-threaded applications running on multi-core systems, it occurs often that there are certain data structures, which are frequently read but relatively seldom changed. An example of this would be a database server that has a list of databases that changes rarely, but needs to be consulted for every single query hitting the database. In such sitations one needs to guarantee fast read access as well as protection against inconsistencies, use after free and memory leaks.

Therefore we seek a lock-free protection mechanism that scales to lots of threads on modern machines and uses only C++11 standard library methods. The mechanism should be easy to use and easy to understand and prove correct. This repository presents a solution to this, which is probably not new, but which we still did not find anywhere else.

Usage:

make
./DataProtectorTest 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

See the file DataProtector.md for more details about the code in this repository.