CppCon is the most significant conference in the C++ world. This year brought new developments, particularly for HFT and multithreading.
We know the most efficient multithreading occurs when concurrent data access is minimized. The optimal setup involves pinning threads to specific CPU cores and distributing data across threads, with minimal concurrent access.
Traditionally, when concurrent access is necessary, it’s often managed through multiple producer, multiple consumer (MPMC) queues.
At this year’s CppCon 2024, Michael Maniscalco presented “Rethinking Task-Based Concurrency and Parallelism for Low Latency C++.” His big idea is to replace queues with other data structures. He introduced the Signal Tree, achieving speedups of 30x to 90x over state-of-the-art MPMC queues, particularly for tasks that need to be completed in under a microsecond.
Another advantage is the significantly reduced contention, paving the way for scalable performance as the thread count increases.
It’s remarkable how long we’ve relied on MPMC queues for concurrency without questioning the very basic underlying idea.
The conference was packed with HFT professionals, some of whom are already exploring this concept. In HFT, the rule is simple: the first gets everything, the second gets nothing. We’re about to witness how critical thinking shapes competition 🙂
Congratulations to Michael Maniscalco, and kudos to his deep expertise in C++!
