Google Tech Talks
March 28, 2007

ABSTRACT

I present a lock-free concurrent Hash Table implementation with better single-thread performance than most Hash Tables, and better multi-thread performance than all other implementations I tried. I demonstrate scaling up to 768 CPUs even with high mutation rates. I show correctness by looking at the problem in a very different light than the usual "happens-before" / memory-order / fencing style of thinking.

Speaker:  Dr. Cliff Click

Dr. Cliff Click, Azul Systems. Chief JVM Architect, Distinguished Engineer With more than twenty-five years experience developing compilers Cliff serves as Azul Systems' Chief JVM Architect. Cliff joined Azul in 2002 from Sun Microsystems where he was the architect and lead developer of the HotSpot Server Compiler, a technology that has delivered dramatic improvements in Java performance since its inception. Previously he was with Motorola where he helped deliver industry leading SpecInt2000 scores on PowerPC chips, and before that he researched compiler technology at HP Labs. Cliff has been writing optimizing compilers and JITs for over 15 years. He is invited to speak regularly at industry and academic conferences, and has published many papers about HotSpot technology. Cliff holds a PhD in Computer Science from Rice University.

Google engEDU
Speaker: Cliff Click

Paweł Kraszewski

Linux

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Cliff Click discusses his experience in creating a lock-free hash table for Java, which scales efficiently in heavily multi-threaded environments. He explains the importance and implementation of compare-and-swap (CAS) for atomic updates, introduces a state machine for proving algorithm correctness, and highlights the performance benefits of lock-free data structures. The hash table design does not require locks, enabling superior scaling and fault tolerance even with massive CPU counts.

Advanced Topics in Programming Languages: A Lock-Free Hash Table