Question

I am currently writing a scientific article, where I need to be very exact with citation. Can someone point me to either MSDN, MSDN article, some published article source or a book, where I can find performance comparison of Windows or .NET Synchronization primitives.

I know that these are in the descending performance order: Interlocked API, Critical Section, .NET lock-statement, Monitor, Mutex, EventWaitHandle, Semaphore.

Many Thanks,
Ovanes

P.S. I found a great book: Concurrent Programming on Windows by Joe Duffy. This book is written by one of the head concurrency developers for .NET Framework and is simply brilliant with lots of explanations, how things work or were implemented.

Answer 1

For a rough comparison following numbers from Lockless Programming Considerations for Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows may come handy.

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The performance of synchronization instructions and functions on Windows vary widely depending on the processor type and configuration, and on what other code is running. Multi-core and multi-socket systems often take longer to execute synchronizing instructions, and acquiring locks take much longer if another thread currently owns the lock.

However, even some measurements generated from very simple tests are helpful:

• MemoryBarrier was measured as taking 20-90 cycles.
• InterlockedIncrement was measured as taking 36-90 cycles.
• Acquiring or releasing a critical section was measured as taking 40-100 cycles.
• Acquiring or releasing a mutex was measured as taking about 750-2500 cycles.

These tests were done on Windows XP on a range of different processors. The short times were on a single-processor machine, and the longer times were on a multi-processor machine.