4 HN users recommended this talk5 months2020–2024score 7
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN treats it as the classic go-to for learning atomics and memory ordering, recommended over books.
Herb Sutter's deep C++ and Beyond 2012 talk on atomics and the C++ memory model, covering why programmers chasing top performance need to understand hardware ordering. This is part one of two.
If you’re prepared and willing to learn much more about atomic operations than you ever thought you would, there’s no substitute to Herb Sutter’s classic talk ”atomic<> Weapons” from C++ And Beyond 2012 [1]. [1] [this video]
Classic deep talk on atomic operations and the memory model
For a more in depth introduction to the topic with a lot of practical code examples, I highly recommend Herb Sutter’s excellent talk: Part 1 [this video] Part 2 [link]
In-depth introduction with practical code examples
Well written article, nice and to the point. Do recommend. Decades ago I declared myself too stupid to use shared memory with threading; I have learned to avoid this whenever possible, or abstract away the memory access under a safe layer as soon as possible. One of the greatest decisions of my career. Memory model semantics is one of the parts of systems programming that is generally poorly understood; I have had long discussions with senior programmers who have spent their careers carelessly threading their code without realizing what is happening under the hood. Not only did some of them not properly understand the acquire/release model, but they were not even aware of its existence. For a more in-depth explanation, I recommend Sutter's excellent talk "Atomic <> weapons": [this video] . It is a two hour lecture, but it will be worth your time.
Excellent two-hour lecture on memory model semantics
"Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It?" is one of the best books about atomics and concurrency, and my #2 recommendation. [link] My #1 actually isn't a book at all, but the two "atomic Weapons" talks by Herb Sutter, which are extremely good. [this video] [link]
Top recommendation for learning atomics, ahead of books
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