portable-atomic

Portable atomic types including support for 128-bit atomics, atomic float, etc.

• Provide all atomic integer types (Atomic{I,U}{8,16,32,64}) for all targets that can use atomic CAS. (i.e., all targets that can use std, and most no-std targets)
• Provide AtomicI128 and AtomicU128.
• Provide AtomicF32 and AtomicF64. (optional, requires the float feature)
• Provide atomic load/store for targets where atomic is not available at all in the standard library. (RISC-V without A-extension, MSP430, AVR)
• Provide atomic CAS for targets where atomic CAS is not available in the standard library. (thumbv6m, pre-v6 ARM, RISC-V without A-extension, MSP430, AVR, Xtensa, etc.) (always enabled for MSP430 and AVR, optional otherwise)
• Provide stable equivalents of the standard library's atomic types' unstable APIs, such as AtomicPtr::fetch_*, AtomicBool::fetch_not, Atomic*::as_ptr.
• Make features that require newer compilers, such as fetchmax, fetchmin, fetch_update, and stronger CAS failure ordering available on Rust 1.34+.
• Provide workaround for bugs in the standard library's atomic-related APIs, such as [rust-lang/rust#100650], fence/compiler_fence on MSP430 that cause LLVM error, etc.

Usage

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

toml [dependencies] portable-atomic = "1"

The default features are mainly for users who use atomics larger than the pointer width. If you don't need them, disabling the default features may reduce code size and compile time slightly.

toml [dependencies] portable-atomic = { version = "1", default-features = false }

If your crate supports no-std environment and requires atomic CAS, enabling the require-cas feature will allow the portable-atomic to display helpful error messages to users on targets requiring additional action on the user side to provide atomic CAS.

toml [dependencies] portable-atomic = { version = "1.3", default-features = false, features = ["require-cas"] }

Compiler support: requires rustc 1.34+

128-bit atomics support

Native 128-bit atomic operations are available on x86_64 (Rust 1.59+), aarch64 (Rust 1.59+), powerpc64 (le or pwr8+, nightly only), and s390x (nightly only), otherwise the fallback implementation is used.

On x86_64, even if cmpxchg16b is not available at compile-time (note: cmpxchg16b target feature is enabled by default only on macOS), run-time detection checks whether cmpxchg16b is available. If cmpxchg16b is not available at either compile-time or run-time detection, the fallback implementation is used. See also portable_atomic_no_outline_atomics cfg.

They are usually implemented using inline assembly, and when using Miri or ThreadSanitizer that do not support inline assembly, core intrinsics are used instead of inline assembly if possible.

See also the atomic128 module's readme.

Optional features

• fallback (enabled by default)
  Enable fallback implementations.

  Disabling this allows only atomic types for which the platform natively supports atomic operations.

• float
  Provide AtomicF{32,64}.

  Note that most of fetch_* operations of atomic floats are implemented using CAS loops, which can be slower than equivalent operations of atomic integers. (GPU targets have atomic instructions for float, so we plan to use these instructions for GPU targets in the future.)

• std
  Use std.

• require-cas
  Emit compile error if atomic CAS is not available. See Usage section and #100 for more.

• serde
  Implement serde::{Serialize,Deserialize} for atomic types.

  Note:

  • The MSRV when this feature is enabled depends on the MSRV of [serde].

• critical-section
  When this feature is enabled, this crate uses [critical-section] to provide atomic CAS for targets where it is not natively available. When enabling it, you should provide a suitable critical section implementation for the current target, see the [critical-section] documentation for details on how to do so.

  critical-section support is useful to get atomic CAS when --cfg portable_atomic_unsafe_assume_single_core can't be used, such as multi-core targets, unprivileged code running under some RTOS, or environments where disabling interrupts needs extra care due to e.g. real-time requirements.

  Note that with the critical-section feature, critical sections are taken for all atomic operations, while with --cfg portable_atomic_unsafe_assume_single_core some operations don't require disabling interrupts (loads and stores, but additionally on MSP430 add, sub, and, or, xor, not). Therefore, for better performance, if all the critical-section implementation for your target does is disable interrupts, prefer using --cfg portable_atomic_unsafe_assume_single_core instead.

  Note:

  • The MSRV when this feature is enabled depends on the MSRV of [critical-section].
  • It is usually not recommended to always enable this feature in dependencies of the library.

  Enabling this feature will prevent the end user from having the chance to take advantage of other (potentially) efficient implementations (Implementations provided by --cfg portable_atomic_unsafe_assume_single_core, default implementations on MSP430 and AVR, implementation proposed in [#60], etc. Other systems may also be supported in the future).

  The recommended approach for libraries is to leave it up to the end user whether or not to enable this feature. (However, it may make sense to enable this feature by default for libraries specific to a platform where other implementations are known not to work.)

  As an example, the end-user's Cargo.toml that uses a crate that provides a critical-section implementation and a crate that depends on portable-atomic as an option would be expected to look like this:

  toml [dependencies] portable-atomic = { version = "1", default-features = false, features = ["critical-section"] } crate-provides-critical-section-impl = "..." crate-uses-portable-atomic-as-feature = { version = "...", features = ["portable-atomic"] }

Optional cfg

.cargo/config.toml