Atomics in javascript might sound like a joke, but hi, we said the same thing about atomics with Donald Trump... anyways quite silently in 2017, JS got it access to Atomics API and shareable data structure, on this talk will explore Atomics API and what can we do with it. Video: https://youtu.be/eF4RNebWioU

1. Atomic
Javascript
By Barak Drechsler

2. Barak Drechsler
Software Engineer at Oath
Israel
Enthusiast about the web
since sixth grade
Proud citizen of the Israeli JS
community
@BarakDrechsler

4. TC39
February 2017
Operation:
ecmascript_sharedmem

5. Parallelism
VS Concurrency

6. Parallelism
A B C D

7. Concurrency
B
A
C
D

8. Message Queue
Call Stack
Click Here

9. Message Queue
Call Stack
Click Here
Click Callback
Click Callback
FUNC A
FUNC B
Click Callback Click Callback
Run
To
Completion

10. W W

11. Adding a web worker

12. Call Stack
Click HereClick CB
FUNC A
FUNC B
Call Stack
message
Call Stack
message
Click CB
FUNC B
Main Thread Worker 1
Worker 2
Func B
Func B

14. Sharing Data?

15. Transfer API!
👍
👍
👎

16. Shared Array
Buffer

17. Shared Array Buffer

18. Accessing the shared memory

19. Dangers of multithreaded programming
● Deadlocks
● Unpredictable
order of read write
operations
● Data fragmentation

20. Deadlock due to compiler optimizations
Compiler might optimize to:

21. What can we do?

23. Atomics API - Read a value, thread safe

24. Atomics API - Write a value, thread safe

25. Solving the lock...
Might lock...

26. Solving the lock...

27. Solving the lock… Even better!

28. And the awakening side...

29. Atomics API - More tricks

30. Transform strings to Int32 Arrays
And Back...

31. Live Example