Scalable rundown protection for object lifetime management
US7571288B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jul 3, 2006 |
| Grant date | Aug 4, 2009 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jul 3, 2026 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F12/0261
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
Object rundown protection that scales with the number of processors in a shared-memory computer system is disclosed. Prior to object rundown, a cache-aware reference count data structure is used to prevent cache-pinging that would otherwise result from data sharing across processors in a multiprocessor computer system. In this data structure, a counter of positive references and negative dereferences, aligned on a particular cache line, is maintained for each processor. When an object is to be destroyed, a rundown wait process is begun, during which new references on the object are prohibited, and the total number of outstanding references is added to an on-stack global counter. Destruction is delayed until the global reference count is reduced to zero. In an implementation on non-uniform memory access multiprocessor machines, each processor's reference count is additionally allocated in a region of main memory that is physically close to that processor.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.