Can atomic variable replace pthread_rwlock ? Can it be lock-free

I have some thread to write resource and some to read it.But pthread_rwlock cause a lot of context switch. So I imagine a way to avoid it. But I'm not sure it is safe or not.

This is the code:

sig_atomic_t slot = 0;

struct resource {
    sig_atomic_t in_use;  /*Counter,if in_use, not zero*/
    .....
} xxx[2];

int read_thread()
{
    i = slot; /*avoid slot changes in process */
    xxx[i].in_use++;
    read(xxx[i]);
    xxx[i].in_use--;
}

int write_thread()
{
    mutex_lock;  /*mutex between write threads */

    if (slot == 0) {
    while(xxx[1].in_use != 0);  /*wait last read thread in slot 1*/
    clear(xxx[1]);
    write(xxx[1]);
    slot = 1;
    } else if (slot == 1) {
    while(xxx[0].in_use != 0);
    clear(xxx[0]);
    write(xxx[0]);
    slot = 0;
    }

    mutex_unlock;
}

Will that works? The cost is 2 times storage and 3 atomic variable. Thanks a lot!

Solution

Your strategy is to have writers write to a different slot than what the readers are reading from. And you are switching the reading slot number after a write is completed. However, you will have a race.

slot    reader             writer1            writer2
----    ------             -------            -------
0                          mutex_lock
        i = 0
                           ... slot=1
1                          mutex_unlock       mutex_lock
                                              ... clear(xxx[0])
        xxx[0].in_use++
        read(xxx[0])                          write(xxx[0])

In general, though, this strategy could lead to starvation of writers (that is a writer may spin forever).

However, if you are willing to tolerate that, it would be safer to let xxx[] be an array of 2 pointers to resource. Let the reader always read from xxx[0], and let the writers contend for updates on xxx[1]. When a writer is finished updating xxx[1], it uses CAS on xxx[0] and xxx[1].

struct resource {
    sig_atomic_t in_use;  /*Counter,if in_use, not zero*/
    sig_atomic_t writer;
    .....
} *xxx[2];

void read_thread()
{
    resource *p = xxx[0];
    p->in_use++;
    while (p->writer) {
        p->in_use--;
        p = xxx[0];
        p->in_use++;
    }
    read(*p);
    p->in_use--;
}

void write_thread()
{
    resource *p;
    mutex_lock;  /*mutex between write threads */
    xxx[1]->writer = 1;

    while(xxx[1]->in_use != 0);  /*wait last read thread in slot 1*/
    clear(xxx[1]);
    write(xxx[1]);
    xxx[1] = CAS(&xxx[0], p = xxx[0], xxx[1]);
    assert(p == xxx[1]);

    xxx[0]->writer = 0;
    mutex_unlock;
}

If you want to avoid writer starvation, but you want the performance of spinlocks, you are looking at implementing your own reader/writer locks using spinlocks instead of mutex locks. A google search for "read write spinlock implementation" pointed to this page which I found to be an interesting read.