Rust Atomics and Locks: Low-Level Concurrency in Practice

The Rust programming language is extremely well suited for concurrency, and its ecosystem has many libraries that include lots of concurrent data structures, locks, and more. But implementing those structures correctly can be very difficult. Even in the most well-used libraries, memory ordering bugs are not uncommon.

In this practical book, Mara Bos, leader of the Rust library team, helps Rust programmers of all levels gain a clear understanding of low-level concurrency. You’ll learn everything about atomics and memory ordering and how they’re combined with basic operating system APIs to build common primitives like mutexes and condition variables. Once you’re done, you’ll have a firm grasp of how Rust’s memory model, the processor, and the role of the operating system all fit together.

With this guide, you’ll learn:

• How Rust’s type system works exceptionally well for programming concurrency correctly
• All about mutexes, condition variables, atomics, and memory ordering
• What happens in practice with atomic operations on Intel and ARM processors
• How locks are implemented with support from the operating system
• How to write correct code that includes concurrency, atomics, and locks
• How to build your own locking and synchronization primitives correctly

Mara Bos maintains the Rust standard library and builds real time control systems in Rust. As team lead of the Rust library teams, she knows all the ins and outs of the language and the standard library. In addition, she has been working with concurrent real time systems for years at the company she founded. Maintaining the most-used library in the Rust ecosystem and working daily on safety critical systems has given her the hands-on experience to both understand the theory and bring it to practice.