Category: Technology

Conditional variable is a common concept in both user-space and kernel-space programming. IMHO, it is a little complicated synchronization mechanism. Recently, I came across Measuring context switching and memory overheads for Linux threads, and this article provides an example which I think is a good tutorial about how to understand and use conditional variable.

The parent thread code is like following:

  /* parent thread */
  pthread_mutex_lock(&si.mutex);
  pthread_t childt;
  pthread_create(&childt, NULL, threadfunc, (void*)&si);

  // Each iteration of this loop will switch context from the parent to the
  // child and back - two context switches. The child signals first.
  ......
  for (int i = 0; i < NUM_ITERATIONS; ++i) {
    pthread_cond_wait(&si.cv, &si.mutex);
    pthread_cond_signal(&si.cv);
  }
  pthread_mutex_unlock(&si.mutex);

And this is the child thread code:

// The child thread signals first
  pthread_mutex_lock(&si->mutex);
  pthread_cond_signal(&si->cv);
  for (int i = 0; i < NUM_ITERATIONS; ++i) {
    pthread_cond_wait(&si->cv, &si->mutex);
    pthread_cond_signal(&si->cv);
  }
  pthread_mutex_unlock(&si->mutex);

(1) The first takeaway is pthread_cond_signal() must be called after pthread_cond_wait() in timing sequence; otherwise the signal won’t be received.

Check preceding code, before launching child thread:

    ......
    pthread_t childt;
    pthread_create(&childt, NULL, threadfunc, (void*)&si);
    ......

The parent thread must hold mutex first:

    ......
    pthread_mutex_lock(&si.mutex);
    ......

Then in the first iteration of loop, release the mutex and wait for notification:

    ......
    pthread_cond_wait(&si.cv, &si.mutex);
    ......

This can guarantee when child thread sends signal, the parent thread is already in the wait queue:

  ......
  pthread_mutex_lock(&si->mutex);
  pthread_cond_signal(&si->cv);
  ......

(2) The other thing we should remember is before and after calling pthread_cond_wait(), the current thread must hold the mutex. I.e., before callingpthread_cond_wait(), the current thread get the mutex, then in pthread_cond_wait(), put the current thread in the wait queue and release the mutexatomically. Once another thread signals current thread, it will reacquire mutex and return from pthread_cond_wait().