False Sharing

This lesson gives an overview of a false sharing problem which might occur during the implementation of concurrency in C++.

When a processor reads a variable such as an int from main memory, it will read more than the size of an int from memory; the processor will read an entire cache line (typically 64 bytes) from memory. False sharing occurs if two threads read different int's at the same time, a and b that are located on the same cache line. Although a and b are logically separated, they are physically connected. An expensive hardware synchronization on the cache line is necessary because a and b share the same one. The result is that you will get the right results, but the performance of your concurrent application decreases.

std::hardware_destructive_interference_size and std::hardware_constructive_interference_size with C++17

Both functions let you deal in a portable way with the cache line size. std::hardware_destructive_interference_size returns the minimum offset between two objects to avoid false sharing and std::hardware_constructive_interference_size returns the maximum size of contiguous memory to promote true sharing.

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