That's exactly what the original implementers needed to do, make those fields volatile.
They're private implementation fields though. Trouble is, none of these old jvm homogenous PermissionCollection's have been exposed to any more than single threads before and the last thing I want to do is reimplement them. They're supposed to be thread safe but many have visibility issues. Considering java security policy is a occassional write, multi read, it should be simple to make it scale very well, using immutability and concurrency utils. There's just some legacy cruft that spoils it a little. I guess I could make a wrapper class that uses volatile and write replace, but then if it changes you still have to replace the underlying PermissionCollection, and still wear the synchronisation cost. Cheers, Peter. Cheers, Peter. ----- Original message ----- > What about a volatile as the visibility control? Write after update, read > before access? It would at least expose the changes to other threads, not be > a > lock, and represent a fairly limited overhead on most hardware. > > Gregg > > On 10/27/2011 8:55 AM, Peter wrote: > > The problem: > > > > Stale references allowed and noted in comments: > > > > java.security.Permissions > > java.security.BasicPermissions.BasicPermissionCollection > > > > The stale reference in Permissions is an AllPermission object - an > > optimisation. If a thread doesn't see the current value, it just checks the > > internal Map, which is synchronised, no biggy. > > > > Problem is, Permissions is a heterogenous PermissionCollection, it contains > > a > > Map, synchronzed thread access, which prevents a similar optimisation in the > > homogenous BasicPermissionCollection from being seen in the stale state. > > > > Every ProtectionDomain has its own Permissions and each Permission class > > type > > has it's own unique PermissionCollection shared with all others with the > > same > > type for a ProtectionDomain. > > > > I replaced Permissions with a class called ConcurrentPermissions that uses a > > ConcurrentMap > > > > Trouble is BasicPermissionCollection is no longer protected by > > synchronization > > in Permissions. BasicPermissionCollection now exposed to multiple threads > > has > > a stale reference optimisation for wildcard * permissions. > > > > What happens in my concurrent policy implementation is the Permission isn't > > necessarily found in the BasicPermissionCollection by a second thread, so it > > checks the PermissionGrants (immutable objects that contain data from policy > > files or dynamic grants) again and adds all the permissions to > > BasicPermissionCollection again. So it doesn't fail, but it doesn't scale > > well with contention, because you've still got the synchronisation > > bottleneck, > > can't see the Permission and have to process again, wasting resources, on > > the > > second occassion. > > > > Problem is, BasicPermissionCollection is the bread and butter > > PermissionCollection implementation many Permission classes use. > > > > Now you have to remember, these classes were designed well before > > concurrency > > was ever a consideration. Nowadays these classes would be immutable, since > > policy's don't change much, they're mostly read access. > > > > But I can't change it because many are part of the decision process. > > > > Now I could put a synchronized wrapper PermissionCollection class around > > these > > things, which fixes the bug, creating long lived objects that live on the > > heap > > and will likely cause L2 cache misses or contended locks. > > > > How about something different? > > > > Create the PermissionCollection's on demand, then discard immediately after > > use. The Permission objects themselves are long lived immutable objects. > > > > Why? > > > > It'll be used only by one thread, so the jvm will optimise out the > > synchronised locks. > > > > The object will be created on the threads local memory stack, instead of the > > heap and die in the young generation, so it doesn't incur gc heap generation > > movements or memory heap copy to cpu cache stalls. > > > > But what about single thread applications or those with few threads and > > little > > contention? They would run slower, although object allocation costs aren't > > as > > bad as people think, say 10 to 20 cpu cycles compared to 200 for a cache > > miss, > > or worse for a contended lock. > > > > Pattern matching of strings is the most expensive computation of most > > permission decisions and has to be repeated for every ProtectionDomain on > > the > > call stack for each thread, the impact on single core machines won't be > > much. > > I can test for that, but not the high end stuff. > > > > Arrghh decisions! Not enough test hardware. > > > > Cheers, > > > > Peter. > > >
