Re: [patch] Re: using long instead of atomic_t when only set/read is required

Linus Torvalds
2008-03-03T22:24:41Z

On Mon, 3 Mar 2008, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
>
> Well something like this could happen, in theory, on a "32-bit" architecture
> with a 16-bit bus.

No it couldn't.

That would only be true if there is no cache, and no cache coherency.

Basically, Linux requires a cache-coherent architecture to work in SMP.
Anything else is insane (except as a cluster).

So there is no way we can see partial updates, except with terminally
broken hardware that we would never support anyway for tons of other
reasons.

Linus