Facilitating communication and synchronization between main and scout threads

摘要

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for communicating and performing synchronization operations between a main thread and a helper-thread. The system starts by executing a program in a main thread. Upon encountering a loop which has associated helper-thread code, the system commences the execution of the code by the helper-thread separately and in parallel with the main thread. While executing the code by the helper-thread, the system periodically checks the progress of the main thread and deactivates the helper-thread if the code being executed by the helper-thread is no longer performing useful work. Hence, the helper-thread is executes in advance of where the main thread is executing to prefetch data items for the main thread without unnecessarily consuming processor resources or hampering the execution of the main thread.