what's the point of rpython?

[Rhodri James]

On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:19:26 -0000, Paul Rubin  
<"http://phr.cx"@nospam.invalid> wrote:

> "Brendan Miller" <catphive at catphive.net> writes:
>> Maybe I'm missing something here but a lock free algorithm for
>> reference counting seems pretty trivial. As long as you can atomically
>> increment and decrement an integer without locking you are pretty much
>> done.
>
> What cpu's do you know of that can atomically increment and decrement
> integers without locking?

x86 (and pretty much any 8080 derivative, come to think of it).

That said, what you actually need is an atomic read-and-increment,
which is a lot harder to find.  Even if you could find a platform
supporting it, it doesn't help you on other platforms you may need to
run on.  Just do the locking properly and worry about optimisations
later.

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeeste Herder to the Masses