atomic

Definition

The atomic construct ensures that a specific storage location is accessed atomically as it name suggests, rather than exposing it to the possibility of multiple, simultaneous reading and writing threads that may result in indeterminate values.

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#pragma omp atomic [read]
                   [write]
                   [update]
                   [capture]
                   [seq_cst]
                   [acq_rel]
                   [acquire]
                   [relaxed]

Example

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#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <omp.h>

/**
 * @brief Illustrates how to use an atomic construct.
 * @details This application consists of 4 threads incrementing a shared
 * variable. This situation is a classic data-race configuration, but the atomic
 * construct guarantees correctness by making sure the variable is accessed
 * atomically. In a nutshell, altough we still do not know in which order the
 * increments are done, we are certain they do not corrupt each other. This
 * situation is to illustrate the atomic construct, in real-world codes, you
 * will want to use a reduction clause instead.
 **/
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    // Use 4 threads when creating OpenMP parallel regions
    omp_set_num_threads(4);

    int total = 0;

    // Create the parallel region
    #pragma omp parallel default(none) shared(total)
    {
        for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
        {
            // Atomically add one to the total
            #pragma omp atomic
            total++;
        }
    }

    printf("Total = %d.\n", total);

    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}