Atomic Operations
Atomic operations are indivisible, thread-safe operations that complete without interruption from other threads, ensuring data consistency in concurrent programming. They are fundamental for implementing synchronization primitives like locks, semaphores, and lock-free data structures. These operations are typically provided at the hardware or language level to prevent race conditions in multi-threaded environments.
Developers should learn atomic operations when building concurrent or parallel applications to safely manage shared resources without using heavy locks, improving performance and scalability. They are essential for implementing high-performance systems, real-time processing, and distributed computing where data integrity is critical. Use cases include counters, flags, and state management in multi-threaded servers, databases, and game engines.