C++ Concurrency Papers Still Under Discussion

Monday, 07 July 2008

Last week I wrote about the new working draft of the C++0x standard and the newly-accepted concurrency papers, but I didn't mention the papers still under discussion. There's a few of those, listed below. The committee intends to publish a formal Committee Draft of the C++0x Standard at the end of the September meeting, so anything not voted into the WP at that meeting has missed the boat (though of course defects will still be fixed).

N2671: An Asynchronous Future Value: Proposed Wording

For those of you who've been following my postings about asynchronous future values for C++, this is the latest proposal on futures. Though it was discussed at the June meeting, the LWG didn't feel it was ready to be voted in to the working draft yet. At the request of the LWG, packaged_task has been removed; I should have a separate proposal for that ready before the next meeting.

N2668: Concurrency Modifications to Basic String

Yes, I listed this as approved last week, but I misread the minutes of the votes: it is still under discussion. The changes in this paper ensure that it is safe for two threads to access the same std::string object at the same time, provided they both perform only read operations. They also ensure that copying a string object and then modifying that copy is safe, even if another thread is accessing the original. This essentially disallows copy-on-write implementations since the benefits are now severely limited.

N2633: Improved support for bidirectional fences

This paper aims to simplify and improve the support for fences (also known as memory barriers) when writing code using the new atomic types. As the paper points out, the current atomic_variable.fence(memory_ordering) semantics can mean that compilers have to issue stronger-than-necessary fences in many cases. By making the fences free functions that are not tied to an individual variable, they will map much better to the underlying instructions, and should lead to clearer (and more optimal) code.

N2643: C++ Data-Dependency Ordering: Function Annotation

This paper is a counterpart to N2664: C++ Data-Dependency Ordering: Atomics and Memory Model, and extends the list of cases where dependencies are carried by allowing you to annotate functions. The new style [[annotation syntax]] is used to indicate which parameters carry a dependency into a function, and whether or not the return type carries a dependency to the call site.

Posted by Anthony Williams
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Tags: C++, concurrency, C++0x
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