On 28/06/11 15:15, Andrew Brunner wrote:
On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 9:00 AM, Henry Vermaak<henry.verm...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 28/06/11 14:23, Andrew Brunner wrote:
There is no problem no need for volatile variables. Compare and Swap
or Interlocked mechanisms will solve any problems.
Nope. You still need to prevent the cpu from reordering instructions with
memory barriers. I'm starting to sound like a broken record. If you don't
understand this, use the threading primitives provided by your operating
system like everyone else.
Henry
You've got your list particiapants mixed up. It was me who suggested
order is important (at least on the lazarus discussion).
No, I was talking to you.
And I am am 100% correct. Interlocked / CAS happen in one shot. They
don't need barriers. They are protected.
I think you have my conversations mixed up.
The reason for my comment is that I get the idea that you think you can
only use atomic operations to implement thread safe code. Please
correct me if I'm misunderstanding you.
If this is the case, you are mistaken. Your code then probably only
works on x86 and amd64 (with some luck), since on those architectures
atomic instructions aren't reordered with loads or stores. In fact, x86
and amd64 _only_ reorders stores after loads. Architectures like later
ARM/POWER can reorder _anything_ for you, including atomic operations.
You will need memory barriers in addition to atomic instructions, even
on x86/amd64 in all but the simplest cases.
This is basically what pthread_mutex and windows critical sections
already do for you (spinlock + barrier). If they're not working for
you, you are using them incorrectly.
Henry
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