[cfe-commits] Patch for review/integration: __sync_swap()

[Dave Zarzycki]

Eli,

Thanks for the feedback. I've updated the patch:

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For whatever it may be worth, plain atomic swaps are invaluable to Apple's modern threading library ("Grand Central Dispatch" a.k.a. libdispatch). <http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/#grandcentral>

davez


On Apr 8, 2011, at 7:38 PM, Eli Friedman wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Dave Zarzycki <zarzycki at apple.com> wrote:
>> Background:
>> 
>> The __sync_*() atomic intrinsics do not directly expose the fundamental atomic swap operation that many processors support. One can indirectly get at the instruction by using __sync_lock_test_and_set(), but the documentation for that intrinsic does not promise to be an atomic swap on all architectures or even be a full barrier like the other __sync_*() intrinsics. This patch fixes this oversight:
> 
> It's not really an oversight; the __sync_ intrinsics were invented by
> Intel for Itanium, and the Itanium xchg instruction isn't a full
> barrier.  I don't see any harm in adding this anyway, although I'm not
> really an expert in lock-free algorithms.
> 
>> This is my first clang patch, so please be understanding if I made any newbie mistakes.
>> 
>> Thanks for considering this change,
> 
> I don't see anything wrong with the patch itself, but you should add a
> note in docs/LanguageExtensions.html.
> 
> -Eli