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Advanced Topics in Programming Languages: A Lock-Free Hash Table

GoogleTalksArchive · talk · Watch on YouTube

Algorithms & data structuresSoftware performance & optimizationDistributed systems

What it is

A 2007 Google Tech Talk in which Cliff Click of Azul Systems presents a lock-free concurrent hash table that scales to 768 CPUs. He explains why it is correct by reasoning in a different way than usual happens-before and memory-order arguments.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN regards it as one of the best technical talks, a deep and clear walkthrough of scalable lock-free hash tables built on compare-and-swap.

  • 4 people recommended it
  • 5 different months
  • 2 strong recommendations
  • first 2013, last 2024

What HN commenters said

  1. “Anything from Cliff Click is quite good.”

    Best technical talk, deep understanding of compilers, VMs, CPUs

    qznc, 2013-04 · Strong recommendation · in “Ask HN: What's the best technical talk you've heard?”

  2. “I highly recommend this talk by Cliff Click about building highly scalable hash tables via Compare And Swap”

    Building highly scalable hash tables via CAS

    benreesman, 2024-09 · Strong recommendation · in “Build a serverless ACID database with this one neat trick (atomic PutIfAbsent)”

  3. “The talk is really worth it, if you're curious about the design”

    Design of lock-free hashtable and when ConcurrentHashMap suffices

    ignoramous, 2016-02 · Recommendation · in “A resizable concurrent map”

  4. “I've always admired the wizardry of Cliff Click's concurrent hash”

    Admired wizardry of Click's concurrent hash

    eternalban, 2017-05 · Recommendation · in “An Atomic Hash Table”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: lock-free, hash table, concurrency, cliff click, compare-and-swap, java

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