This package provides semi-portable access to hardware-provided atomic memory update operations on a number architectures. These might allow you to write code:

* That does more interesting things in signal handlers.

* Makes more effective use of multiprocessors by allowing you to write clever lock-free code. Note that such code is very difficult to get right, and will unavoidably be less portable than lock-based code. It is also not always faster than lock-based code. But it may occasionally be a large performance win.

* To experiment with new and much better thread programming paradigms, etc.