Spinlock
A spinlock is a mutual-exclusion synchronization primitive in which a waiting thread repeatedly checks or attempts to acquire the lock rather than blocking.
C++ Concurrency in Action, Second Edition
A mutex implementation in which a waiting thread repeatedly attempts to acquire the lock rather than blocking.
- How it is used
- Uses repeated atomic-flag attempts to implement mutual exclusion without a blocking call.
- How deep it goes
- Works through lock and unlock operations and their acquire-release ordering; warns about contention rather than developing a contention-handling strategy.
- Examples
- Shows a std::atomic_flag mutex and a barrier that yields while waiting for its generation to change.
- What you can do after
- Build it from scratch with std::atomic_flag and evaluate when busy-waiting or lock dependence makes it unsuitable.
Read how C++ Concurrency in Action, Second Edition explains spinlock →
Learn Concurrent Programming with Go
A spin lock is a mutual-exclusion lock whose unsuccessful acquisition repeatedly retries while the execution remains active instead of blocking.
- How it is used
- Protects grouped shared-state updates, such as multi-flight reservations, when single-variable atomic updates are insufficient.
- How deep it goes
- Works through a complete Go Locker implementation using an atomic integer, CompareAndSwap loop, scheduler yield, and atomic unlock.
- Examples
- Uses a multi-flight booking race and a Go SpinLock implementation with a 0/1 state flag.
- What you can do after
- Build it from scratch as a Go sync.Locker and extend it with TryLock or a spinning semaphore.
Read how Learn Concurrent Programming with Go explains spinlock →
Related concepts
- lockless techniquecontrasts with · Lock-free is a concurrency progress property that guarantees some operation completes within a finite number of steps despite contention, without relying on mutual-exclusion locks.
- mutexkind of · A mutex is a synchronization primitive that provides controlled exclusive access to shared data or another resource.
- atomic_flagimplemented by · An atomic flag is a standard atomic type representing a flag and providing indivisible operations to set or clear it for synchronization.
- atomicityimplemented by · Atomicity is the property that an operation or group of operations takes effect as an indivisible, all-or-nothing unit, without observable partial effects.
- lockingimplements · Locking is a synchronization technique that restricts concurrent access to shared resources or protected operations.
- compare-and-exchange operationuses · A compare-and-exchange operation atomically replaces a value with a desired value only if the current value matches an expected value.
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