Week 23: Advanced Concurrency Patterns (Advanced)

Overview

Week 23 dives deep into advanced concurrency patterns in Rust, focusing on building custom synchronization primitives and understanding the internals of Rust’s async system. You’ll learn how to design sophisticated concurrent systems, implement your own executor, and master low-level concurrency techniques.

Day 1-3: Custom Synchronization Primitives

Topics

• Building custom locks and mutexes:
  • Understanding the std::sync primitives internals
  • Implementing custom Mutex from scratch
  • Specialized lock implementations
  • Biased locking techniques
  • Reader-writer lock optimizations
• Wait-free algorithms:
  • Lock-free vs wait-free algorithms
  • Hazard pointers
  • Memory reclamation techniques
  • Epoch-based reclamation
  • Wait-free data structures
  • Non-blocking algorithms
• Memory ordering models:
  • Atomic operations in depth
  • Memory barriers
  • Acquire/release semantics
  • Relaxed, Acquire, Release, SeqCst ordering
  • Happens-before relationships
  • The C++/Rust memory model
  • Hardware memory models
• Low-level synchronization:
  • Futexes on Linux
  • Event objects on Windows
  • Park/unpark mechanics
  • Condition variables
  • Barriers and latches
  • Semaphores

Resources

• Rust Atomics and Locks by Mara Bos
• Concurrency in the std Library
• The Art of Multiprocessor Programming
• Lock-Free Data Structures
• Memory Ordering at Compile Time
• Futexes in Rust
• Crossbeam Internals

Use Cases

• High-performance concurrent systems
• Real-time applications
• Low-latency trading systems
• Operating system components
• Database engines
• Thread synchronization libraries
• Lock-free data structures
• High-throughput message passing

Day 4-7: Advanced Async Patterns

Topics

• Building custom executors:
  • Future internals
  • Waker implementation
  • Task scheduling
  • Executor design patterns
  • Work-stealing executors
  • Integration with I/O
  • Single-threaded vs multi-threaded executors
• Futures implementation details:
  • State machines
  • Generator/coroutine theory
  • MIR desugaring of async/await
  • Stack unwinding in async context
  • Async drop and the Drop trait
  • The Pin API and self-referential futures
• Advanced async patterns:
  • Cancellation
  • Timeouts and deadlines
  • Backpressure management
  • Resource management
  • Graceful shutdown
  • Error propagation patterns
  • Stream processing patterns
• Structured concurrency:
  • Task spawning and lifetime management
  • Scoped tasks
  • JoinSet and JoinHandle
  • Select statements
  • Racing futures
  • Cooperative task management
  • Async function in traits

Resources

• Tokio Tutorial
• Async Book
• Futures Explained
• Tokio Internals
• Pin and Suffering
• Understanding Rust Futures by Going Way Too Deep
• Async Ecosystem Working Group

Use Cases

• Custom async runtimes
• Specialized task schedulers
• High-performance network services
• Event-driven architectures
• Stream processing systems
• Distributed systems
• Reactive programming frameworks
• Real-time communication systems

Exercises

1. Implement a custom Mutex with different fairness guarantees
2. Create a wait-free queue implementation
3. Build a simple thread pool with work stealing
4. Implement a basic Future executor from scratch
5. Create a custom synchronization primitive for a specific use case
6. Develop an advanced backpressure mechanism for async streams

Advanced Challenges

1. Build a lock-free concurrent hash map
2. Implement a custom async executor with novel scheduling properties
3. Create a structured concurrency library with advanced cancellation
4. Develop a benchmark suite comparing different synchronization primitives
5. Implement a custom async I/O system integrated with OS primitives

Next Steps

After completing Week 23, you’ll have mastered advanced concurrency patterns in Rust. Week 24 will bring together all the knowledge you’ve gained in a capstone project, allowing you to build a sophisticated system that demonstrates your expert-level Rust skills.