critical-section

I don't quite understand the documentation for InitializeCriticalSectionAndSpinCount: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms683476(v=vs.85).aspx It says "You can improve performance significantly by choosing a small spin count ..." However, since waiting on a spinner is faster than waiting for an object, doesn't it make sense to have the SpinCount as high as possible? What am I missing? Thanks. (I am using it inside a C DLL used by a multi-threaded application) Here is the code for the critical section, called constantly by a large number of threads: int g_slots[256] = {0};

I'm a little confused as to the proper use of critical sections in multithreaded applications. In my application there are several objects (some circular buffers and a serial port object) that are shared among threads. Should access of these objects always be placed within critical sections, or only at certain times? I suspect only at certain times because when I attempted to wrap each use with an EnterCriticalSection / LeaveCriticalSection I ran into what seemed to be a deadlock condition. Any insight you may have would be appreciated. Thanks. If you share a resource across threads, and some

Suppose you have an object which can be accesed by many threads. A critical section is used to protect the sensitive areas. But what about the destructor? Even if I enter a critical section as soon as I enter the destructor, once the destructor has been called, is the object already invalidated? My train of thought: Say I enter the destructor, and I have to wait on the critical section because some other thread is still using it. Once he is done, I can finish destroying the object. Does this make sense? In general, you should not destroy an object until you know that no other thread is using