Using wait-free synchronization to increase system reliability and performance

Wait-free synchronization has been recognized in the research literature as an effective programming technique in the development of concurrent programs. The concurrent programming community, however, has been slow to adopt this technique. Our research addresses the practical application of wait-free synchronization in the design of operating systems, distributed systems, and network applications. We demonstrate its use in the scheduler of the Linux operating system and in the design of client-server applications. The resultant programming code from using wait-free synchronization is more easily seen to be fault tolerant, yet suffers no performance penalty. The performance analysis showed the wait-free synchronization techniques outperformed the traditional locks. This practical demonstration of the benefits of wait-free synchronization should help foster its adoption in the development of computer software in which concurrent programming is relevant.