Read-copy-update (RCU) is an operating system kernel technology for improving performance on computers with more than one
CPU. It is also the topic of one claim in the SCO v. IBM
lawsuit. More technically it is a
synchronization mechanism which can sometimes be used as an alternative to a
readers-writer lock. It allows extremely low overhead,
wait-free reads. However, RCU updates can be expensive, as they must leave the old versions of the data structure in place to accommodate pre-existing readers. These old versions are reclaimed after all pre-existing readers finish their accesses. RCU can be put to a number of other tasks, including dynamically changing NMI (
Non-Maskable interrupt) handlers and implementing lazy barriers, but it is most frequently used as replacement for reader-writer locking.
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