regarding __atomic_load_n()

Question

When I do something like:

thread 1:
 int count = 0;
 int *thread_var = 

thread 2:    
 __atomic_store_n(thread_var, 7, __ATOMIC_RELEASE);

Do I then need to do the following in thread 3?

thread 3 option 1:
 *thread_var = __atomic_load_n(thread_var, __ATOMIC_ACQUIRE);

Or do this suffice?

thread 3 option 2:
 __atomic_load_n(thread_var, __ATOMIC_ACQUIRE);

Answer 1

1) Do I then need to do the following in thread 3?

What are you trying to do?

2) *thread_var = __atomic_load_n(thread_var, __ATOMIC_ACQUIRE);

This reads the value of *thread_var, returns it, then (non-atomically) stores it back in *thread_var. What's the point of that? If you need the value, you still haven't read it back from *thread_var (and you may have created a race condition by writing to *thread_var.)

3) __atomic_load_n(thread_var, __ATOMIC_ACQUIRE);

This loads the value then discards it again. I think you want:

int var = __atomic_load_n(thread_var, __ATOMIC_ACQUIRE);

Comments

Not really. What I have is a variable which is shared by two threads, but for the most part only read and written in one of them. One thread runs continually in a loop, the other does not. Then, occasionally, I'm pausing the looping thread. From the other thread I then want to read *thread_val and set it to another value. Then I restart the looping thread which should now have the be able to see the new value of *thread_val.

I was merely concerned that the new value of *thread_val was returned from __atomic_load_n() but not yet necessarily accessible by simply dereferencing thread_val.

Anyways, you've cleared up my concerns, thanks.