Just installed Linux Mint - I love it! A real improvement over the bloated Ubuntu 11.10 release and Unity. It's fast to startup and shutdown, responsive and has a lovely UI.
The hand off between producer and consumer can be configured to be both synchronous (single threaded) as well as asynchronous (one producer thread, many consumers threads).
As far as I understand three of the key features are:
1. Reduced queue contention: queues are typically implemented with a list, e.g. linked list, this introduces contention (queues spend a lot of time empty or very full) for the head and tail of the queue which are often the same dummy node. The ring buffer removes this contention.
2. Machine Sympathy vis a vis cache striding and ensuring concurrent threads are not invalidating each others level 1/2 cache.
3. Pre-allocation of queue data structures to ensure GC is not a factor.
Personally I think the LMAX team have done well in advancing the state of the art in what is often a key component in event driven, high throughput low latency systems such as those used in banks for trading, exchanges and market data.
That mammals other than humans are capable of emotion and concious thought comes as no surprise to me. Why some humans derive pleasure from inflicting unnecessary cruelty towards other beasts I will never understand.
