Atomics Glossary

Browse 4 atomics terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

4 Atomics Terms

Atomic Counter: A counter variable that can be incremented, decremented, or read safely across threads without race conditions by using atomic operations. Atomic counters are...
Atomic Reference: A reference holder that supports thread-safe atomic reads and swaps so shared pointers or objects can be updated without races. Atomic references are often...
Memory Model: A formal specification defining how reads and writes to shared memory behave in a concurrent program — which reorderings the compiler and hardware are allowed...
Memory Order: A parameter on atomic operations (in C++, Rust, etc.) that specifies the strength of ordering guarantees: `relaxed` (no ordering), `acquire` (subsequent reads...