Implementing a variable size ring buffer?

Question

I’ve understood the ideas behind having a ring buffer and how it helps to not have to shift elements around in the process. However, I’m curious how one would best deal with a variable-length buffer that is thread-safe and offers similar advantages to the ring buffer? Could we double the size upon reaching capacity and have one thread do the copy-over within a mutex? Would this just variable-sized buffer just be a queue that is implemented to be thread-safe? What would be the best approach and what are the advantages and disadvantages to the alternate solutions to this type of concurrent read/write access?

Matt Timmermans · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-29 22:19:56Z

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For a multi-thread producer/consumer application, a single circular buffer usually stops being a good idea when you need it to grow.

I would usually switch to a lock-free singly-linked list of single-use FIFO buffers of fixed size, with unused buffers that can be recycled stored in a lock-free stack.

The non-bocking queue from here is simple and practical: https://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/scott/papers/1996_PODC_queues.pdf

answered Jun 29, 2019 at 22:19

Matt Timmermans

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RobertBaron · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-29 22:09:20Z

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A linked list might be better as no copy-over would be needed when extending the ring buffer.

answered Jun 29, 2019 at 22:09

RobertBaron

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