Everything About ___
Live briefing

Everything about Spinlock

In computing, a lock which causes a thread to loop continuously

In software engineering, a spinlock is a lock that causes a thread trying to acquire it to simply wait in a loop ("spin") while repeatedly checking whether the lock is available. Since the thread remains active but is not performing a useful task, the use of such a lock is a kind of busy waiting. Once acquired, spinlocks will usually be held until they are explicitly released, although in some implementations they may be automatically released if the thread being waited on blocks or "goes to sleep". Wikipedia →

🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path

  1. Read the overview: SpinlockA 5-minute orientation
  2. Pick up a classic book: Introduction to parallel programmingThe most-reprinted book on the subject
  3. Read the landmark paper: Towards quantification of pulsed spinlock and CEST at clinical MR scanners: an analytical interleaved saturation–relaxation (ISAR) approachCited 42 times
  4. Go sideways: Test-and-setA closely related topic
  5. Go sideways: CPUIDA closely related topic

📖 Definitions

Noun A lock which causes a thread trying to acquire it simply to wait in a loop ("spin") while repeatedly checking if the lock is available.

Verb To use a spinlock.

🗂️ The subject at a glance

  1. Example implementation
  2. Significant optimizations
  3. Alternatives

🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)

📚 Books worth reading

Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.

🔗 Related topics