[zeromq-dev] atomic ops

[john skaller]

I am looking at the atomic ops stuff, and I find this a bit suspicious,
and also suboptimal:

#elif (defined __i386__ || defined __x86_64__) && defined __GNUC__
#define ZMQ_ATOMIC_COUNTER_X86

...

#elif defined ZMQ_ATOMIC_COUNTER_X86
            integer_t oldval = -decrement;
            volatile integer_t *val = &value;
            __asm__ volatile ("lock; xaddl %0,%1"
                : "=r" (oldval), "=m" (*val)
                : "0" (oldval), "m" (*val)
                : "cc", "memory");
            return oldval != decrement;


First, I surely wouldn't trust inline assembler, and I'm suspicious of
"lock; xadd". This code also won't be selected except on x86 or x86_64.

Wouldn't it be better to use this function:

type __sync_fetch_and_add (type *ptr, type value, ...)

which is guaranteed to work on all processors?

I'd trust gcc to do the right thing a lot more than inline assembler.
That function is always available if __GNUC__ is set, on recent
enough implementations of gcc. The spec comes from gcc 4.1.2.
[Presumably config can double check..]

--
john skaller
skaller at users.sourceforge.net