[LLVMdev] LLVM language atomic and syscall/int instructions

[Chris Lattner]

On Fri, 10 Feb 2006, Wink Saville wrote:
> In reading the language reference manual I don't see any capability to 
> perform atomic operations or issue sys calls and or software interrupts.

There is no reason to include syscalls directly in LLVM: LLVM wouldn't 
provide any portability over using standard (e.g. unix) system calls, and 
you can use inline assembly to do non-portable system calls.

> I see here, http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2005-11/msg01031.html, that Anthony 
> asked about atomic operations but I didn't see an answer.

I would like to see intrinsics for atomic instructions in LLVM.  At one 
point, these were under development, but have apparently not been 
completed.  If you were interested in working on such a thing, following 
the GCC model for atomic builtins makes sense.  Patches welcome, this 
would be a nice straight-forward beginner project if you (or anyone else) 
is interested.

-Chris

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