atomic_ops(3)
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ATOMIC_OPS(3) NetBSD Library Functions Manual ATOMIC_OPS(3)
NAME
atomic_ops -- atomic memory operations
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/atomic.h>
DESCRIPTION
The atomic_ops family of functions provide atomic memory operations.
There are 7 classes of atomic memory operations available :
atomic_add(3) These functions perform atomic addition.
atomic_and(3) These functions perform atomic logical ``and''.
atomic_cas(3) These functions perform atomic compare-and-swap.
atomic_dec(3) These functions perform atomic decrement.
atomic_inc(3) These functions perform atomic increment.
atomic_or(3) These functions perform atomic logical ``or''.
atomic_swap(3) These functions perform atomic swap.
Synchronization mechanisms
Where the architecture does not provide hardware support for atomic
compare and swap (CAS), atomicity is provided by a restartable
sequence or by a spinlock. The chosen method is not ordinarily dis-
tinguishable by or visible to users of the interface. The following
architectures can be assumed to provide CAS in hardware: alpha,
amd64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, sparc64.
Scope and restrictions
If hardware CAS is available, the atomic operations are globally
atomic: operations within a memory region shared between processes
are guaranteed to be performed atomically. If hardware CAS is not
available, it may only be assumed that the operations are atomic with
respect to threads in the same process. Additionally, if hardware
CAS is not available, the atomic operations must not be used within a
signal handler.
Users of atomic memory operations should not make assumptions about
how the memory access is performed (specifically, the width of the
memory access). For this reason, applications making use of atomic
memory operations should limit their use to regular memory. The
results of using atomic memory operations on anything other than reg-
ular memory are undefined.
Users of atomic memory operations should take care to modify any
given memory location either entirely with atomic operations or
entirely with some other synchronization mechanism. Intermixing of
atomic operations with other synchronization mechanisms for the same
memory location results in undefined behavior.
Visibility and ordering of memory accesses
If hardware CAS is available, stores to the target memory location by
an atomic operation will reach global visibility before the operation
completes. If hardware CAS is not available, the store may not reach
global visibility until some time after the atomic operation has com-
pleted. However, in all cases a subsequent atomic operation on the
same memory cell will be delayed until the result of any preceeding
operation has reached global visibility.
Atomic operations are strongly ordered with respect to each other.
The global visibility of other loads and stores before and after an
atomic operation is undefined. Applications that require synchro-
nization of loads and stores with respect to an atomic operation must
use memory barriers. See membar_ops(3).
Performance
Because atomic memory operations require expensive synchronization at
the hardware level, applications should take care to minimize their
use. In certain cases, it may be more appropriate to use a mutex,
especially if more than one memory location will be modified.
SEE ALSO
atomic_add(3), atomic_and(3), atomic_cas(3), atomic_dec(3),
atomic_inc(3), atomic_or(3), atomic_swap(3), membar_ops(3)
HISTORY
The atomic_ops functions first appeared in NetBSD 5.0.
NetBSD 5.0.1 Febuary 11, 2007 NetBSD 5.0.1
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