Advantages of using condition variables over mutex

conditional-statementsmultithreadingmutexpthreadsvariables

I was wondering what is the performance benefit of using condition variables over mutex locks in pthreads.

What I found is : "Without condition variables, the programmer would need to have threads continually polling (possibly in a critical section), to check if the condition is met. This can be very resource consuming since the thread would be continuously busy in this activity. A condition variable is a way to achieve the same goal without polling." (https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/pthreads)

But it also seems that mutex calls are blocking (unlike spin-locks). Hence if a thread (T1) fails to get a lock because some other thread (T2) has the lock, T1 is put to sleep by the OS, and is woken up only when T2 releases the lock and the OS gives T1 the lock. The thread T1 does not really poll to get the lock. From this description, it seems that there is no performance benefit of using condition variables. In either case, there is no polling involved. The OS anyway provides the benefit that the condition-variable paradigm can provide.

Can you please explain what actually happens.

Best Answer

A condition variable allows a thread to be signaled when something of interest to that thread occurs.

By itself, a mutex doesn't do this.

If you just need mutual exclusion, then condition variables don't do anything for you. However, if you need to know when something happens, then condition variables can help.

For example, if you have a queue of items to work on, you'll have a mutex to ensure the queue's internals are consistent when accessed by the various producer and consumer threads. However, when the queue is empty, how will a consumer thread know when something is in there for it to work on? Without something like a condition variable it would need to poll the queue, taking and releasing the mutex on each poll (otherwise a producer thread could never put something on the queue).

Using a condition variable lets the consumer find that when the queue is empty it can just wait on the condition variable indicating that the queue has had something put into it. No polling - that thread does nothing until a producer puts something in the queue, then signals the condition that the queue has a new item.

Related Solutions

A mutex

When I am having a big heated discussion at work, I use a rubber chicken which I keep in my desk for just such occasions. The person holding the chicken is the only person who is allowed to talk. If you don't hold the chicken you cannot speak. You can only indicate that you want the chicken and wait until you get it before you speak. Once you have finished speaking, you can hand the chicken back to the moderator who will hand it to the next person to speak. This ensures that people do not speak over each other, and also have their own space to talk.

Replace Chicken with Mutex and person with thread and you basically have the concept of a mutex.

Of course, there is no such thing as a rubber mutex. Only rubber chicken. My cats once had a rubber mouse, but they ate it.

Of course, before you use the rubber chicken, you need to ask yourself whether you actually need 5 people in one room and would it not just be easier with one person in the room on their own doing all the work. Actually, this is just extending the analogy, but you get the idea.

Difference between binary semaphore and mutex

They are NOT the same thing. They are used for different purposes!
While both types of semaphores have a full/empty state and use the same API, their usage is very different.

Mutual Exclusion Semaphores
Mutual Exclusion semaphores are used to protect shared resources (data structure, file, etc..).

A Mutex semaphore is "owned" by the task that takes it. If Task B attempts to semGive a mutex currently held by Task A, Task B's call will return an error and fail.

Mutexes always use the following sequence:

  - SemTake
  - Critical Section
  - SemGive

Here is a simple example:

  Thread A                     Thread B
   Take Mutex
     access data
     ...                        Take Mutex  <== Will block
     ...
   Give Mutex                     access data  <== Unblocks
                                  ...
                                Give Mutex

Binary Semaphore
Binary Semaphore address a totally different question:

Task B is pended waiting for something to happen (a sensor being tripped for example).
Sensor Trips and an Interrupt Service Routine runs. It needs to notify a task of the trip.
Task B should run and take appropriate actions for the sensor trip. Then go back to waiting.


   Task A                      Task B
   ...                         Take BinSemaphore   <== wait for something
   Do Something Noteworthy
   Give BinSemaphore           do something    <== unblocks

Note that with a binary semaphore, it is OK for B to take the semaphore and A to give it.
Again, a binary semaphore is NOT protecting a resource from access. The act of Giving and Taking a semaphore are fundamentally decoupled.
It typically makes little sense for the same task to so a give and a take on the same binary semaphore.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

A mutex

Difference between binary semaphore and mutex

Related Topic