Re: Is gcc thread-unsafe?

From: Phillip Susi
Date: Wed Oct 31 2007 - 18:10:35 EST


pushl %ebp
movl %esp, %ebp
cmpl $0, 8(%ebp)
movl $1, %eax
cmove v, %eax ; load (maybe)
movl %eax, v ; store (always)
popl %ebp
ret

How is this even an optimization? It looks SLOWER to me. The conditional read wastes memory bandwidth sometimes, if the condition is true, and v isn't already in the cache. The unconditional write wastes memory bandwidth ALL the time, and dirties/flushes caches, in addition to not being thread safe.

This SHOULD be using a conditional write instead of a conditional read and an unconditional write.


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