This package provides semi-portable access to hardware provided atomic memory operations. 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.