System and method for supporting a self-tuning locking mechanism in a transactional middleware machine environment

A method for supporting a locking mechanism in a transactional middleware machine environment, comprising:

• providing a semaphore associated with an operating system running on a plurality of processors, wherein the semaphore operates to control access to data in a shared memory;
• using, via a process of one or more processes, a test-and-set (TAS) assembly component to perform one or more TAS operations in order to obtain a lock for data in the shared memory;
• blocking the process on the semaphore after the TAS component has performed a specified number of maximum rounds of TAS operations allowed and failed to obtain the lock, wherein the process being blocked in the semaphore waits for a release of a lock on the data in the shared memory;
• and
• periodically determining a spin count, which is the specified number of maximum rounds of TAS operations allowed, wherein the spin count is increased from the spin count of a previous period, if a number of spin failures in the previous period exceeds a spin failure limit and a CPU idle ratio in the previous period is below a CPU idle ratio limit, and the spin count is decreased from the spin count of a previous period, if the CPU idle ratio exceeds a CPU idle ratio limit.

A non-transitory machine readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon that when executed cause a system to perform the steps comprising:

• providing a semaphore associated with an operating system running on a plurality of processors, wherein the semaphore operates to control access to data in a shared memory;
• using, via a process of one or more processes, a test-and-set (TAS) assembly component to perform one or more TAS operations in order to obtain a lock for data in the shared memory;
• blocking the process on the semaphore after the TAS component has performed a specified number of maximum rounds of TAS operations allowed and failed to obtain the lock, wherein the process being blocked in the semaphore waits for a release of a lock on the data in the shared memory;
• and
• periodically determining a spin count, which is the specified number of maximum rounds of TAS operations allowed, wherein the spin count is increased from the spin count of a previous period, if a number of spin failures in the previous period exceeds a spin failure limit and a CPU idle ratio in the previous period is below a CPU idle ratio limit, and the spin count is decreased from the spin count of a previous period, if the CPU idle ratio exceeds a CPU idle ratio limit.