1 ==============================================
2 LLVM Atomic Instructions and Concurrency Guide
3 ==============================================
11 LLVM supports instructions which are well-defined in the presence of threads and
14 The atomic instructions are designed specifically to provide readable IR and
15 optimized code generation for the following:
17 * The C++11 ``<atomic>`` header. (`C++11 draft available here
18 <http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/>`_.) (`C11 draft available here
19 <http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/>`_.)
21 * Proper semantics for Java-style memory, for both ``volatile`` and regular
22 shared variables. (`Java Specification
23 <http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se8/html/jls-17.html>`_)
25 * gcc-compatible ``__sync_*`` builtins. (`Description
26 <https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/_005f_005fsync-Builtins.html>`_)
28 * Other scenarios with atomic semantics, including ``static`` variables with
29 non-trivial constructors in C++.
31 Atomic and volatile in the IR are orthogonal; "volatile" is the C/C++ volatile,
32 which ensures that every volatile load and store happens and is performed in the
33 stated order. A couple examples: if a SequentiallyConsistent store is
34 immediately followed by another SequentiallyConsistent store to the same
35 address, the first store can be erased. This transformation is not allowed for a
36 pair of volatile stores. On the other hand, a non-volatile non-atomic load can
37 be moved across a volatile load freely, but not an Acquire load.
39 This document is intended to provide a guide to anyone either writing a frontend
40 for LLVM or working on optimization passes for LLVM with a guide for how to deal
41 with instructions with special semantics in the presence of concurrency. This
42 is not intended to be a precise guide to the semantics; the details can get
43 extremely complicated and unreadable, and are not usually necessary.
45 .. _Optimization outside atomic:
47 Optimization outside atomic
48 ===========================
50 The basic ``'load'`` and ``'store'`` allow a variety of optimizations, but can
51 lead to undefined results in a concurrent environment; see `NotAtomic`_. This
52 section specifically goes into the one optimizer restriction which applies in
53 concurrent environments, which gets a bit more of an extended description
54 because any optimization dealing with stores needs to be aware of it.
56 From the optimizer's point of view, the rule is that if there are not any
57 instructions with atomic ordering involved, concurrency does not matter, with
58 one exception: if a variable might be visible to another thread or signal
59 handler, a store cannot be inserted along a path where it might not execute
60 otherwise. Take the following example:
64 /* C code, for readability; run through clang -O2 -S -emit-llvm to get
68 for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
74 The following is equivalent in non-concurrent situations:
81 for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
88 However, LLVM is not allowed to transform the former to the latter: it could
89 indirectly introduce undefined behavior if another thread can access ``x`` at
90 the same time. That thread would read `undef` instead of the value it was
91 expecting, which can lead to undefined behavior down the line. (This example is
92 particularly of interest because before the concurrency model was implemented,
93 LLVM would perform this transformation.)
95 Note that speculative loads are allowed; a load which is part of a race returns
96 ``undef``, but does not have undefined behavior.
101 For cases where simple loads and stores are not sufficient, LLVM provides
102 various atomic instructions. The exact guarantees provided depend on the
103 ordering; see `Atomic orderings`_.
105 ``load atomic`` and ``store atomic`` provide the same basic functionality as
106 non-atomic loads and stores, but provide additional guarantees in situations
107 where threads and signals are involved.
109 ``cmpxchg`` and ``atomicrmw`` are essentially like an atomic load followed by an
110 atomic store (where the store is conditional for ``cmpxchg``), but no other
111 memory operation can happen on any thread between the load and store.
113 A ``fence`` provides Acquire and/or Release ordering which is not part of
114 another operation; it is normally used along with Monotonic memory operations.
115 A Monotonic load followed by an Acquire fence is roughly equivalent to an
116 Acquire load, and a Monotonic store following a Release fence is roughly
117 equivalent to a Release store. SequentiallyConsistent fences behave as both
118 an Acquire and a Release fence, and offer some additional complicated
119 guarantees, see the C++11 standard for details.
121 Frontends generating atomic instructions generally need to be aware of the
122 target to some degree; atomic instructions are guaranteed to be lock-free, and
123 therefore an instruction which is wider than the target natively supports can be
124 impossible to generate.
126 .. _Atomic orderings:
131 In order to achieve a balance between performance and necessary guarantees,
132 there are six levels of atomicity. They are listed in order of strength; each
133 level includes all the guarantees of the previous level except for
134 Acquire/Release. (See also `LangRef Ordering <LangRef.html#ordering>`_.)
141 NotAtomic is the obvious, a load or store which is not atomic. (This isn't
142 really a level of atomicity, but is listed here for comparison.) This is
143 essentially a regular load or store. If there is a race on a given memory
144 location, loads from that location return undef.
147 This is intended to match shared variables in C/C++, and to be used in any
148 other context where memory access is necessary, and a race is impossible. (The
149 precise definition is in `LangRef Memory Model <LangRef.html#memmodel>`_.)
152 The rule is essentially that all memory accessed with basic loads and stores
153 by multiple threads should be protected by a lock or other synchronization;
154 otherwise, you are likely to run into undefined behavior. If your frontend is
155 for a "safe" language like Java, use Unordered to load and store any shared
156 variable. Note that NotAtomic volatile loads and stores are not properly
157 atomic; do not try to use them as a substitute. (Per the C/C++ standards,
158 volatile does provide some limited guarantees around asynchronous signals, but
159 atomics are generally a better solution.)
162 Introducing loads to shared variables along a codepath where they would not
163 otherwise exist is allowed; introducing stores to shared variables is not. See
164 `Optimization outside atomic`_.
166 Notes for code generation
167 The one interesting restriction here is that it is not allowed to write to
168 bytes outside of the bytes relevant to a store. This is mostly relevant to
169 unaligned stores: it is not allowed in general to convert an unaligned store
170 into two aligned stores of the same width as the unaligned store. Backends are
171 also expected to generate an i8 store as an i8 store, and not an instruction
172 which writes to surrounding bytes. (If you are writing a backend for an
173 architecture which cannot satisfy these restrictions and cares about
174 concurrency, please send an email to llvm-dev.)
179 Unordered is the lowest level of atomicity. It essentially guarantees that races
180 produce somewhat sane results instead of having undefined behavior. It also
181 guarantees the operation to be lock-free, so it does not depend on the data
182 being part of a special atomic structure or depend on a separate per-process
183 global lock. Note that code generation will fail for unsupported atomic
184 operations; if you need such an operation, use explicit locking.
187 This is intended to match the Java memory model for shared variables.
190 This cannot be used for synchronization, but is useful for Java and other
191 "safe" languages which need to guarantee that the generated code never
192 exhibits undefined behavior. Note that this guarantee is cheap on common
193 platforms for loads of a native width, but can be expensive or unavailable for
194 wider loads, like a 64-bit store on ARM. (A frontend for Java or other "safe"
195 languages would normally split a 64-bit store on ARM into two 32-bit unordered
199 In terms of the optimizer, this prohibits any transformation that transforms a
200 single load into multiple loads, transforms a store into multiple stores,
201 narrows a store, or stores a value which would not be stored otherwise. Some
202 examples of unsafe optimizations are narrowing an assignment into a bitfield,
203 rematerializing a load, and turning loads and stores into a memcpy
204 call. Reordering unordered operations is safe, though, and optimizers should
205 take advantage of that because unordered operations are common in languages
208 Notes for code generation
209 These operations are required to be atomic in the sense that if you use
210 unordered loads and unordered stores, a load cannot see a value which was
211 never stored. A normal load or store instruction is usually sufficient, but
212 note that an unordered load or store cannot be split into multiple
213 instructions (or an instruction which does multiple memory operations, like
214 ``LDRD`` on ARM without LPAE, or not naturally-aligned ``LDRD`` on LPAE ARM).
219 Monotonic is the weakest level of atomicity that can be used in synchronization
220 primitives, although it does not provide any general synchronization. It
221 essentially guarantees that if you take all the operations affecting a specific
222 address, a consistent ordering exists.
225 This corresponds to the C++11/C11 ``memory_order_relaxed``; see those
226 standards for the exact definition.
229 If you are writing a frontend which uses this directly, use with caution. The
230 guarantees in terms of synchronization are very weak, so make sure these are
231 only used in a pattern which you know is correct. Generally, these would
232 either be used for atomic operations which do not protect other memory (like
233 an atomic counter), or along with a ``fence``.
236 In terms of the optimizer, this can be treated as a read+write on the relevant
237 memory location (and alias analysis will take advantage of that). In addition,
238 it is legal to reorder non-atomic and Unordered loads around Monotonic
239 loads. CSE/DSE and a few other optimizations are allowed, but Monotonic
240 operations are unlikely to be used in ways which would make those
241 optimizations useful.
243 Notes for code generation
244 Code generation is essentially the same as that for unordered for loads and
245 stores. No fences are required. ``cmpxchg`` and ``atomicrmw`` are required
246 to appear as a single operation.
251 Acquire provides a barrier of the sort necessary to acquire a lock to access
252 other memory with normal loads and stores.
255 This corresponds to the C++11/C11 ``memory_order_acquire``. It should also be
256 used for C++11/C11 ``memory_order_consume``.
259 If you are writing a frontend which uses this directly, use with caution.
260 Acquire only provides a semantic guarantee when paired with a Release
264 Optimizers not aware of atomics can treat this like a nothrow call. It is
265 also possible to move stores from before an Acquire load or read-modify-write
266 operation to after it, and move non-Acquire loads from before an Acquire
267 operation to after it.
269 Notes for code generation
270 Architectures with weak memory ordering (essentially everything relevant today
271 except x86 and SPARC) require some sort of fence to maintain the Acquire
272 semantics. The precise fences required varies widely by architecture, but for
273 a simple implementation, most architectures provide a barrier which is strong
274 enough for everything (``dmb`` on ARM, ``sync`` on PowerPC, etc.). Putting
275 such a fence after the equivalent Monotonic operation is sufficient to
276 maintain Acquire semantics for a memory operation.
281 Release is similar to Acquire, but with a barrier of the sort necessary to
285 This corresponds to the C++11/C11 ``memory_order_release``.
288 If you are writing a frontend which uses this directly, use with caution.
289 Release only provides a semantic guarantee when paired with a Acquire
293 Optimizers not aware of atomics can treat this like a nothrow call. It is
294 also possible to move loads from after a Release store or read-modify-write
295 operation to before it, and move non-Release stores from after an Release
296 operation to before it.
298 Notes for code generation
299 See the section on Acquire; a fence before the relevant operation is usually
300 sufficient for Release. Note that a store-store fence is not sufficient to
301 implement Release semantics; store-store fences are generally not exposed to
302 IR because they are extremely difficult to use correctly.
307 AcquireRelease (``acq_rel`` in IR) provides both an Acquire and a Release
308 barrier (for fences and operations which both read and write memory).
311 This corresponds to the C++11/C11 ``memory_order_acq_rel``.
314 If you are writing a frontend which uses this directly, use with caution.
315 Acquire only provides a semantic guarantee when paired with a Release
316 operation, and vice versa.
319 In general, optimizers should treat this like a nothrow call; the possible
320 optimizations are usually not interesting.
322 Notes for code generation
323 This operation has Acquire and Release semantics; see the sections on Acquire
326 SequentiallyConsistent
327 ----------------------
329 SequentiallyConsistent (``seq_cst`` in IR) provides Acquire semantics for loads
330 and Release semantics for stores. Additionally, it guarantees that a total
331 ordering exists between all SequentiallyConsistent operations.
334 This corresponds to the C++11/C11 ``memory_order_seq_cst``, Java volatile, and
335 the gcc-compatible ``__sync_*`` builtins which do not specify otherwise.
338 If a frontend is exposing atomic operations, these are much easier to reason
339 about for the programmer than other kinds of operations, and using them is
340 generally a practical performance tradeoff.
343 Optimizers not aware of atomics can treat this like a nothrow call. For
344 SequentiallyConsistent loads and stores, the same reorderings are allowed as
345 for Acquire loads and Release stores, except that SequentiallyConsistent
346 operations may not be reordered.
348 Notes for code generation
349 SequentiallyConsistent loads minimally require the same barriers as Acquire
350 operations and SequentiallyConsistent stores require Release
351 barriers. Additionally, the code generator must enforce ordering between
352 SequentiallyConsistent stores followed by SequentiallyConsistent loads. This
353 is usually done by emitting either a full fence before the loads or a full
354 fence after the stores; which is preferred varies by architecture.
356 Atomics and IR optimization
357 ===========================
359 Predicates for optimizer writers to query:
361 * ``isSimple()``: A load or store which is not volatile or atomic. This is
362 what, for example, memcpyopt would check for operations it might transform.
364 * ``isUnordered()``: A load or store which is not volatile and at most
365 Unordered. This would be checked, for example, by LICM before hoisting an
368 * ``mayReadFromMemory()``/``mayWriteToMemory()``: Existing predicate, but note
369 that they return true for any operation which is volatile or at least
372 * ``isStrongerThan`` / ``isAtLeastOrStrongerThan``: These are predicates on
373 orderings. They can be useful for passes that are aware of atomics, for
374 example to do DSE across a single atomic access, but not across a
375 release-acquire pair (see MemoryDependencyAnalysis for an example of this)
377 * Alias analysis: Note that AA will return ModRef for anything Acquire or
378 Release, and for the address accessed by any Monotonic operation.
380 To support optimizing around atomic operations, make sure you are using the
381 right predicates; everything should work if that is done. If your pass should
382 optimize some atomic operations (Unordered operations in particular), make sure
383 it doesn't replace an atomic load or store with a non-atomic operation.
385 Some examples of how optimizations interact with various kinds of atomic
388 * ``memcpyopt``: An atomic operation cannot be optimized into part of a
389 memcpy/memset, including unordered loads/stores. It can pull operations
390 across some atomic operations.
392 * LICM: Unordered loads/stores can be moved out of a loop. It just treats
393 monotonic operations like a read+write to a memory location, and anything
394 stricter than that like a nothrow call.
396 * DSE: Unordered stores can be DSE'ed like normal stores. Monotonic stores can
397 be DSE'ed in some cases, but it's tricky to reason about, and not especially
398 important. It is possible in some case for DSE to operate across a stronger
399 atomic operation, but it is fairly tricky. DSE delegates this reasoning to
400 MemoryDependencyAnalysis (which is also used by other passes like GVN).
402 * Folding a load: Any atomic load from a constant global can be constant-folded,
403 because it cannot be observed. Similar reasoning allows sroa with
404 atomic loads and stores.
409 Atomic operations are represented in the SelectionDAG with ``ATOMIC_*`` opcodes.
410 On architectures which use barrier instructions for all atomic ordering (like
411 ARM), appropriate fences can be emitted by the AtomicExpand Codegen pass if
412 ``setInsertFencesForAtomic()`` was used.
414 The MachineMemOperand for all atomic operations is currently marked as volatile;
415 this is not correct in the IR sense of volatile, but CodeGen handles anything
416 marked volatile very conservatively. This should get fixed at some point.
418 One very important property of the atomic operations is that if your backend
419 supports any inline lock-free atomic operations of a given size, you should
420 support *ALL* operations of that size in a lock-free manner.
422 When the target implements atomic ``cmpxchg`` or LL/SC instructions (as most do)
423 this is trivial: all the other operations can be implemented on top of those
424 primitives. However, on many older CPUs (e.g. ARMv5, SparcV8, Intel 80386) there
425 are atomic load and store instructions, but no ``cmpxchg`` or LL/SC. As it is
426 invalid to implement ``atomic load`` using the native instruction, but
427 ``cmpxchg`` using a library call to a function that uses a mutex, ``atomic
428 load`` must *also* expand to a library call on such architectures, so that it
429 can remain atomic with regards to a simultaneous ``cmpxchg``, by using the same
432 AtomicExpandPass can help with that: it will expand all atomic operations to the
433 proper ``__atomic_*`` libcalls for any size above the maximum set by
434 ``setMaxAtomicSizeInBitsSupported`` (which defaults to 0).
436 On x86, all atomic loads generate a ``MOV``. SequentiallyConsistent stores
437 generate an ``XCHG``, other stores generate a ``MOV``. SequentiallyConsistent
438 fences generate an ``MFENCE``, other fences do not cause any code to be
439 generated. ``cmpxchg`` uses the ``LOCK CMPXCHG`` instruction. ``atomicrmw xchg``
440 uses ``XCHG``, ``atomicrmw add`` and ``atomicrmw sub`` use ``XADD``, and all
441 other ``atomicrmw`` operations generate a loop with ``LOCK CMPXCHG``. Depending
442 on the users of the result, some ``atomicrmw`` operations can be translated into
443 operations like ``LOCK AND``, but that does not work in general.
445 On ARM (before v8), MIPS, and many other RISC architectures, Acquire, Release,
446 and SequentiallyConsistent semantics require barrier instructions for every such
447 operation. Loads and stores generate normal instructions. ``cmpxchg`` and
448 ``atomicrmw`` can be represented using a loop with LL/SC-style instructions
449 which take some sort of exclusive lock on a cache line (``LDREX`` and ``STREX``
452 It is often easiest for backends to use AtomicExpandPass to lower some of the
453 atomic constructs. Here are some lowerings it can do:
455 * cmpxchg -> loop with load-linked/store-conditional
456 by overriding ``shouldExpandAtomicCmpXchgInIR()``, ``emitLoadLinked()``,
457 ``emitStoreConditional()``
458 * large loads/stores -> ll-sc/cmpxchg
459 by overriding ``shouldExpandAtomicStoreInIR()``/``shouldExpandAtomicLoadInIR()``
460 * strong atomic accesses -> monotonic accesses + fences by overriding
461 ``shouldInsertFencesForAtomic()``, ``emitLeadingFence()``, and
462 ``emitTrailingFence()``
463 * atomic rmw -> loop with cmpxchg or load-linked/store-conditional
464 by overriding ``expandAtomicRMWInIR()``
465 * expansion to __atomic_* libcalls for unsupported sizes.
466 * part-word atomicrmw/cmpxchg -> target-specific intrinsic by overriding
467 ``shouldExpandAtomicRMWInIR``, ``emitMaskedAtomicRMWIntrinsic``,
468 ``shouldExpandAtomicCmpXchgInIR``, and ``emitMaskedAtomicCmpXchgIntrinsic``.
470 For an example of these look at the ARM (first five lowerings) or RISC-V (last
473 AtomicExpandPass supports two strategies for lowering atomicrmw/cmpxchg to
474 load-linked/store-conditional (LL/SC) loops. The first expands the LL/SC loop
475 in IR, calling target lowering hooks to emit intrinsics for the LL and SC
476 operations. However, many architectures have strict requirements for LL/SC
477 loops to ensure forward progress, such as restrictions on the number and type
478 of instructions in the loop. It isn't possible to enforce these restrictions
479 when the loop is expanded in LLVM IR, and so affected targets may prefer to
480 expand to LL/SC loops at a very late stage (i.e. after register allocation).
481 AtomicExpandPass can help support lowering of part-word atomicrmw or cmpxchg
482 using this strategy by producing IR for any shifting and masking that can be
483 performed outside of the LL/SC loop.
488 There are two kinds of atomic library calls that are generated by LLVM. Please
489 note that both sets of library functions somewhat confusingly share the names of
490 builtin functions defined by clang. Despite this, the library functions are
491 not directly related to the builtins: it is *not* the case that ``__atomic_*``
492 builtins lower to ``__atomic_*`` library calls and ``__sync_*`` builtins lower
493 to ``__sync_*`` library calls.
495 The first set of library functions are named ``__atomic_*``. This set has been
496 "standardized" by GCC, and is described below. (See also `GCC's documentation
497 <https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Atomic/GCCMM/LIbrary>`_)
499 LLVM's AtomicExpandPass will translate atomic operations on data sizes above
500 ``MaxAtomicSizeInBitsSupported`` into calls to these functions.
502 There are four generic functions, which can be called with data of any size or
505 void __atomic_load(size_t size, void *ptr, void *ret, int ordering)
506 void __atomic_store(size_t size, void *ptr, void *val, int ordering)
507 void __atomic_exchange(size_t size, void *ptr, void *val, void *ret, int ordering)
508 bool __atomic_compare_exchange(size_t size, void *ptr, void *expected, void *desired, int success_order, int failure_order)
510 There are also size-specialized versions of the above functions, which can only
511 be used with *naturally-aligned* pointers of the appropriate size. In the
512 signatures below, "N" is one of 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16, and "iN" is the appropriate
513 integer type of that size; if no such integer type exists, the specialization
516 iN __atomic_load_N(iN *ptr, iN val, int ordering)
517 void __atomic_store_N(iN *ptr, iN val, int ordering)
518 iN __atomic_exchange_N(iN *ptr, iN val, int ordering)
519 bool __atomic_compare_exchange_N(iN *ptr, iN *expected, iN desired, int success_order, int failure_order)
521 Finally there are some read-modify-write functions, which are only available in
522 the size-specific variants (any other sizes use a ``__atomic_compare_exchange``
525 iN __atomic_fetch_add_N(iN *ptr, iN val, int ordering)
526 iN __atomic_fetch_sub_N(iN *ptr, iN val, int ordering)
527 iN __atomic_fetch_and_N(iN *ptr, iN val, int ordering)
528 iN __atomic_fetch_or_N(iN *ptr, iN val, int ordering)
529 iN __atomic_fetch_xor_N(iN *ptr, iN val, int ordering)
530 iN __atomic_fetch_nand_N(iN *ptr, iN val, int ordering)
532 This set of library functions have some interesting implementation requirements
535 - They support all sizes and alignments -- including those which cannot be
536 implemented natively on any existing hardware. Therefore, they will certainly
537 use mutexes in for some sizes/alignments.
539 - As a consequence, they cannot be shipped in a statically linked
540 compiler-support library, as they have state which must be shared amongst all
541 DSOs loaded in the program. They must be provided in a shared library used by
544 - The set of atomic sizes supported lock-free must be a superset of the sizes
545 any compiler can emit. That is: if a new compiler introduces support for
546 inline-lock-free atomics of size N, the ``__atomic_*`` functions must also have a
547 lock-free implementation for size N. This is a requirement so that code
548 produced by an old compiler (which will have called the ``__atomic_*`` function)
549 interoperates with code produced by the new compiler (which will use native
550 the atomic instruction).
552 Note that it's possible to write an entirely target-independent implementation
553 of these library functions by using the compiler atomic builtins themselves to
554 implement the operations on naturally-aligned pointers of supported sizes, and a
555 generic mutex implementation otherwise.
560 Some targets or OS/target combinations can support lock-free atomics, but for
561 various reasons, it is not practical to emit the instructions inline.
563 There's two typical examples of this.
565 Some CPUs support multiple instruction sets which can be swiched back and forth
566 on function-call boundaries. For example, MIPS supports the MIPS16 ISA, which
567 has a smaller instruction encoding than the usual MIPS32 ISA. ARM, similarly,
568 has the Thumb ISA. In MIPS16 and earlier versions of Thumb, the atomic
569 instructions are not encodable. However, those instructions are available via a
570 function call to a function with the longer encoding.
572 Additionally, a few OS/target pairs provide kernel-supported lock-free
573 atomics. ARM/Linux is an example of this: the kernel `provides
574 <https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/arm/kernel_user_helpers.txt>`_ a
575 function which on older CPUs contains a "magically-restartable" atomic sequence
576 (which looks atomic so long as there's only one CPU), and contains actual atomic
577 instructions on newer multicore models. This sort of functionality can typically
578 be provided on any architecture, if all CPUs which are missing atomic
579 compare-and-swap support are uniprocessor (no SMP). This is almost always the
580 case. The only common architecture without that property is SPARC -- SPARCV8 SMP
581 systems were common, yet it doesn't support any sort of compare-and-swap
584 In either of these cases, the Target in LLVM can claim support for atomics of an
585 appropriate size, and then implement some subset of the operations via libcalls
586 to a ``__sync_*`` function. Such functions *must* not use locks in their
587 implementation, because unlike the ``__atomic_*`` routines used by
588 AtomicExpandPass, these may be mixed-and-matched with native instructions by the
591 Further, these routines do not need to be shared, as they are stateless. So,
592 there is no issue with having multiple copies included in one binary. Thus,
593 typically these routines are implemented by the statically-linked compiler
594 runtime support library.
596 LLVM will emit a call to an appropriate ``__sync_*`` routine if the target
597 ISelLowering code has set the corresponding ``ATOMIC_CMPXCHG``, ``ATOMIC_SWAP``,
598 or ``ATOMIC_LOAD_*`` operation to "Expand", and if it has opted-into the
599 availability of those library functions via a call to ``initSyncLibcalls()``.
601 The full set of functions that may be called by LLVM is (for ``N`` being 1, 2,
604 iN __sync_val_compare_and_swap_N(iN *ptr, iN expected, iN desired)
605 iN __sync_lock_test_and_set_N(iN *ptr, iN val)
606 iN __sync_fetch_and_add_N(iN *ptr, iN val)
607 iN __sync_fetch_and_sub_N(iN *ptr, iN val)
608 iN __sync_fetch_and_and_N(iN *ptr, iN val)
609 iN __sync_fetch_and_or_N(iN *ptr, iN val)
610 iN __sync_fetch_and_xor_N(iN *ptr, iN val)
611 iN __sync_fetch_and_nand_N(iN *ptr, iN val)
612 iN __sync_fetch_and_max_N(iN *ptr, iN val)
613 iN __sync_fetch_and_umax_N(iN *ptr, iN val)
614 iN __sync_fetch_and_min_N(iN *ptr, iN val)
615 iN __sync_fetch_and_umin_N(iN *ptr, iN val)
617 This list doesn't include any function for atomic load or store; all known
618 architectures support atomic loads and stores directly (possibly by emitting a
619 fence on either side of a normal load or store.)
621 There's also, somewhat separately, the possibility to lower ``ATOMIC_FENCE`` to
622 ``__sync_synchronize()``. This may happen or not happen independent of all the
623 above, controlled purely by ``setOperationAction(ISD::ATOMIC_FENCE, ...)``.