Example usage of the core.sync classes

[Vlad Levenfeld via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Friday, 2 January 2015 at 17:39:19 UTC, Matt wrote:
> I'm trying to write a small 3D engine, and wanted to place the 
> physics in a separate thread to the graphics, using events, 
> possibly std.concurrency, to communicate between them.
>
> How, then, do I pass large amounts of data between threads? I'm 
> thinking the physics world state (matrix for each object, 
> object heirarchies, etc) being passed to the graphics thread 
> for rendering.
>
> I'd assumed that I would use Mutex, or ReadWriteMutex, but I 
> have no idea how to build code using these classes, if this is 
> even the right way to go about this.
>
> I would really appreciate any pointers you can give.
>
>
> Many thanks

My personal favorite method is to use the primitives in 
core.atomic with a double or triple buffer. To double buffer, 
keep two buffers in an array (data[][] or something) and an 
integer index that points to the active buffer, then use 
atomicStore to update active buffer index when you want to swap.
Triple buffering can improve runtime performance at the cost of 
more memory, and in this case you will need two indices and two 
swap methods, one for the producer and another for the consumer. 
I use cas with a timed sleep to update the indices in this case.

Take it with a grain of salt, I'm far from a pro, but this has 
worked well for me in the past. I can post some example code if 
you need it.