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Mutex - Senior

Lock performance depends on hold time, waiter count, fairness, scheduler behavior, and cache-line movement.

flowchart TD Profile --> Short{Critical section short?} Short -->|yes| Adaptive[Brief spin, then park] Short -->|no| Restructure[Move work out or shard]

Linux perf lock, Go block/mutex profiles, JVM Flight Recorder, and thread dumps reveal contention. Watch for lock convoys and priority inversion. Use priority inheritance where real-time scheduling requires it. Compare lock sharding, immutable snapshots, and ownership transfer before lock-free code.

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Test yourself

  1. What evidence identifies a lock convoy?
  2. How does priority inheritance address inversion?
  3. Why can sharding hurt under skewed keys?