Questions tagged [false-sharing]

False sharing is the condition, where in parallel programs, memory cache lines are shared by two or more threads and writes on one cache line would force other cores working on the same line to re-validate their cache. This is a concurrency anti-pattern.

Questions with this tag should be about a suspected or actual false sharing problem.

False sharing is the condition in which in parallel programs, in which memory cache lines which are shared by two or more threads. Writes on one cache line would force other cores working in the same line to re-validate their cache. This is a concurrency anti-pattern.

enter image description here

Note that in the diagram above, Thread 1 writes to A and never B, yet Thread 2 must re-validate its cache to continue computation.

Common ways to alleviate false sharing include storing a thread local result to update to a shared spaced once the computation is completed, and/or spacing contiguous memory blocks that are shared, so they are not on the same cache line.

More information:

Wikipedia

C++ Today Blog Article

93 questions
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Why does false sharing still affect non atomics, but much less than atomics?

Consider the following example that proves false sharing existence: using type = std::atomic; struct alignas(128) shared_t { type a; type b; } sh; struct not_shared_t { alignas(128) type a; alignas(128) type b; }…
Alex Guteniev
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Should static const variables in multi-threaded applications be declared thread_local to avoid false sharing?

static char const err_msg[] = "Hell has frozen over."; For a while I thought it was fine to share const variables like the one above between threads, but then it occurred to me that unless such variables both start and end exactly on a cacheline…
Will
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Compiler optimization eliminates effects of false sharing. How?

I'm trying to replicate the effects of false sharing using OpenMP as explained in the OpenMP introduction by Tim Mattson. My program performs a straightforward numerical integration (see the link for the mathematical details) and I've implemented…
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False Sharing in Hogwild! Algorithms

I am trying to implement the Hogwild! Linear SVM algorithm, but I am running into false sharing problems with my implementation. My code is below, but the background is that I am trying to compute which samples fail my test and make and update which…
user3002273
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How can I show that not false sharing results in performance benefit using 2 threads and two vectors of ints in C++?

I am trying to show that avoiding false sharing results in a performance benefit when using two vectors of integers, a reader vector (values to be read from) and a writer vector (where I am storing the values). Assume the readWrite function below is…
chitanda
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@Contended annotation did not add padding bytes on zulu jdk8?

goal: Test false sharing in java problem: I added the @Contended annotation on field but class layout dit not show the padding bytes. And false sharing still happened. I have 3 tests: no padding add long variables as padding bytes use @Contended…
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Can vector cause false sharing

I'm working with C++11 on a project and here is a function: void task1(int* res) { *res = 1; } void task2(int* res) { *res = 2; } void func() { std::vector res(2, 0); // {0, 0} std::thread t1(task1, &res[0]); std::thread…
Yves
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why does java8'annotation @Contened use 128bytes which is twice cache line size on most hardware

the cacheline size on the most hardware is 64 bytes。 I don’t know why the @Contened pad 128 bytes before and after the field or object ? and i have tried to read the following two articles to relieve my…
bin
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What is the reason why clang and gcc do not implement std::hardware_{constructive,destructive}_interference_size?

I know the answer could be that they did not prioritize it, but it really feels like intentional omission, they already have plenty of C++20 core language/library features and this C++17 feature is still not implemented. In fact according to this…
NoSenseEtAl
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Avoiding false sharing of SPSC queue indices

Let's imagine a lock-free concurrent SPSC (single-producer / single-consumer) queue. The producer thread reads head, tail, cached_tail and writes head, cached_tail. The consumer thread reads head, tail, cached_head and writes tail, cached…
plasmacel
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False sharing over multiple cores

Would false sharing happen in the following program? Memory 1 array divided into 4 equal regions: [A1, A2, B1, B2] The whole array can fit into L1 cache in the actual program. Each region is padded to be a multiple of 64 bytes. Steps 1. thread 1…
R zu
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False sharing with non-volatile state

Can false sharing occur with the following state: Class Foo{ int x; int y; } Whlie two threads are modifying concurrently x and y? Or is it not possible to judge as compiler might optimize x and y to registers?
Bober02
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Avoid false sharing among worker threads with entity-component-system

A cache efficent way of storing components in ECS is dividing up types of components into large arrays, then having each system iterating over the components. However, let's say I also want to avoid false sharing between the rendering and the…
Alex
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False sharing in OpenMP loop array access

I would like to take advantage of OpenMP to make my task parallel. I need to subtract the same quantity to all the elements of an array and write the result in another vector. Both arrays are dynamically allocated with malloc and the first one is…
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Eigen & OpenMP : No parallelisation due to false sharing and thread overhead

System Specification: Intel Xeon E7-v3 Processor(4 sockets, 16 cores/sockets, 2 threads/core) Use of Eigen family and C++ Following is serial implementation of code snippet: Eigen::VectorXd get_Row(const int j, const int nColStart, const int…
user7440094
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