Lock-free and high-performance concurrent algorithms

Speaker:

Location:

Seacliff B

Abstract:

Candidates in this workshop will be introduced to a completely new way of thinking about concurrent programming. By taking a hardware up, rather than theory down, approach you'll learn how modern x86 hardware operates and how when you show sympathy for this hardware your algorithms will absolutely scream. In addition to learning the basic techniques of building high-performance data structures, a performance testing and profiling discipline will be introduced that is fundamental to working at the extremes of systems performance.

Understanding Mechanical Sympathy

Performance considerations on modern hardware
How modern x86-64 hardware informs concurrent and high performance programming techniques
Memory models for software and hardware Why contention of any type is the enemy and how to avoid it
How we manage contention when we absolutely must How the JVM provides support for concurrent programs
Profiling and performance testing

Concurrent and High-performance

Algorithm Design Lock-free concurrency primitives
Signalling state change
Ensuring order
Concurrent data structures

Candidate Requirements

Experience of the Java Programming Language.
A laptop capable of running 4 concurrent threads - This can be a dual core with hyperthreading enabled
Java 5+, and Ant 1.8+ installed, plus IDE of your choice
More advanced profiling techniques can be demonstrated if running Linux

Martin Thompson

Martin is a high-performance and low-latency specialist, with experience gained over two decades working on large scale transactional and big-data systems. He believes in Mechanical Sympathy, i.e. applying an understanding of the hardware to the creation of software as being fundamental to delivering elegant high-performance solutions. The Disruptor framework is just one example of what his mechanical sympathy has created. Martin was the co-founder and CTO of LMAX. He blogs at mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com, and can be found giving training courses on performance and concurrency, or hacking code to make systems better.