Single Producer Single Consumer Lock-free FIFO From the Ground Up - Charles Frasch - CppCon 2023

Testing

Learn how to build a high-performance, lock-free Single Producer Single Consumer (SPSC) FIFO from scratch using C++ and take a deep dive into the optimization techniques used, including Godbolt testing and perf benchmarking.

Key takeaways

Single Producer Single Consumer (SPSC) FIFOs are used in trading engines and high-performance software to handle large volumes of data.
Lock-free SPSC FIFOs use atomic operations to avoid synchronization and improve performance.
The presenter demonstrates how to implement a lock-free SPSC FIFO from scratch using C++.
The FIFO is implemented with a ring buffer and uses memory order relax to load the push cursor.
False sharing is avoided by padding the ring buffer with spare space.
The presenter uses Godbolt to test and optimize the implementation.
The FIFO is tested with perf to record the number of instructions retired per cycle.
The implementation is released on GitHub.
The presenter recommends using sequentially consistent ordering for synchronization.
Memory order relax is used to load the push cursor.
The FIFO is implemented with a single producer and single consumer.
The presenter suggests that the implementation may perform worse with larger data types.
The implementation uses atomic variables to avoid synchronization.
The presenter recommends using the std::atomic library.
The implementation is tested with thread sanitizer and passes all tests.
The presenter recommends using G++12 with O3 to optimize the implementation.
The implementation is compared to other SPSC FIFOs, including Boost.
The presenter suggests that the implementation may not work well with G++12 unless the – Pedantic flag is used.
The implementation is tested with perf and shows good performance.
The presenter recommends using GCC 12 to optimize the implementation.
The implementation is compared to Dmitry Yukov’s Lock-free SPSC FIFOs.
The presenter suggests that the implementation may not work well with older versions of GCC.
The implementation is tested with unit tests and passes all tests.
The presenter recommends using GCC 12 with O3 to optimize the implementation.

Single Producer Single Consumer Lock-free FIFO From the Ground Up - Charles Frasch - CppCon 2023

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