Home/ Questions/Q 3593842
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-18T19:37:53+00:00

I want this statement (within the body of the if statement) to be atomic:

  • 0

I want this statement (within the body of the if statement) to be atomic:

if(I2C1STATbits.P || cmd_buffer_ptr >= CMD_BUFFER_SIZE - 1)
    cmd_buff_full = 1; // should be atomic

My processor (dsPIC33F) supports atomic bit set and clear. It also supports atomic writes for 16-bit registers and memory locations; these are single cycle. How can I be sure the operation will be implemented in an atomic fashion – is there a way to force the compiler to do this? In my case I’m fairly sure it will compile to be atomic, but I don’t want it to change in future if I, for example, change some other code and it reorganises things, or if I update the compiler. For example, is there an atomic keyword?

I’m working with GCC v3.23 – more specifically, MPLAB C30, a modified closed source version of GCC. I am working on a microcontroller, which has only interrupts; there is no concept of threads. The only possible problem with atomicity is that an interrupt may be triggered in the middle of a write over two cycles, if that is even possible.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Depending on what other competing operations you want the assignment to be atomic, you could use sig_atomic_t. Strictly speaking, this protects it only from the presence of signals. In practice, it also provides atomicity wrt. multi-threeading.

    Edit: if the object is to guarantee that the store operation is not coded into two assembler instructions, it will be necessary to use inline assembly – C will make no guarantees in that respect. If the objective is to prevent an interrupt from interfering with the store operation, an alternative is to disable interrupts before the store, and enable them afterwards.

    • 0