Expert · Module 10 · Lesson 8 of 12
Multi-Threaded M:N Schedulers: Work-Stealing Queues and Thread-Local Workers
Scale coroutine execution across all CPU cores using M:N work-stealing scheduling, lock-free Chase-Lev deques with C11 atomics, and cache-aligned worker runqueues.
By the end you can
- Differentiate 1:1, 1:N, and M:N thread scheduling models and analyze scalability trade-offs
- Implement a lock-free single-producer, multi-consumer Chase-Lev work-stealing deque using C11 atomics
- Eliminate global queue lock contention through thread-local worker queues and randomized stealing
- Isolate worker states using 64-byte alignment to prevent multi-core cache-line false sharing
Builds on Cooperative Synchronization: Fiber Mutexes, Semaphores, and Channels.
01 · A question first
A single-threaded fiber runtime caps execution at a single CPU core, while a global shared queue collapses under multi-core mutex contention. How does an M:N work-stealing scheduler distribute millions of fibers across 64 cores with near-zero synchronization overhead?
Make a guess before you read on.
02 · The idea
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What's inside
- Start with the problem
- How the idea works
- Production Implementation: Multi-Threaded Work-Stealing Runtime
- Why it is correct
- What it costs
- Pitfalls and variations
- Where it is used
03 · Practice
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