On 4 May 2017 at 10:24, Toebs Douglass wrote: > Atomic in this context, I believe, actually only really means the > absence of word-tearing; you won't write half your int and then get > swapped out and then write the other half later. No, "atomic" in the C++ memory model has a specific meaning, more than just guaranteeing no word-tearing. Even on a CPU architecture where word-tearing is impossible, the use of atomic operations rather than non-atomic ones gives information to the compiler that affects the semantics.
