TSC-SIG: A Novel Method Based on the CPU Timestamp Counter with POSIX Signals for Efficient Memory Reclamation

In dynamic concurrent data structures, memory management poses a significant challenge due to the diverse types of memory access and operations. Timestamps are widely used in concurrent algorithms, but existing safe memory reclamation algorithms that utilize timestamps often fail to achieve a balance among performance, applicability, and robustness. With the development of the CPU timestamp counter, using it as the timestamp has proven to be efficient. Based on this, we introduce TSC-SIG in this paper to guarantee safe memory reclamation and successfully avoid use-after-free errors. TSC-SIG effectively reduces synchronization overhead, thereby improving the performance of concurrent operations. It leverages the POSIX signal mechanism to restrict the memory footprint. Furthermore, TSC-SIG can be integrated into various data structures. We conducted extensive experiments on diverse data structures and workloads, and the results clearly demonstrate the excellence of TSC-SIG in terms of performance, applicability, and robustness. TSC-SIG shows remarkable performance in read-dominated workloads. As related techniques continue to evolve, TSC-SIG exhibits significant development and application potential.