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The documentation for properties in Obj-C 2.0 say that atomic properties use a lock internally, but it doesn't document the specifics of the lock. Does anybody know if this is a per-property lock, a per-object lock separate from the implicit one used by @synchronized(self), or the equivalent of @synchronized(self)?
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In Objective-C the implementation of an atomic property allows properties to be safely read and written from different threads. For nonatomic properties, the underlying pointer of a read value could be released when a new value is being written at the same time.
Atomic means only one thread accesses the variable (static type). Atomic is thread-safe, but it is slow. Nonatomic means multiple threads access the variable (dynamic type). Nonatomic is thread-unsafe, but it is fast.
Defining a property as atomic should guarantee that it can be safely read and written from different threads. Non-atomic properties have no guarantee regarding the returned value, but they come with enhanced speed of accessing these properties. Note: Property atomicity is not synonymous with an object's thread safety.
@synthesize tells the compiler to take care of the accessor methods creation i.e it will generate the methods based on property description. It will also generate an instance variable to be used which you can specify as above, as a convention it starts with _(underscore)+propertyName.
Looking at the generated code (iOS SDK GCC 4.0/4.2 for ARM),
assign properties (including struct {int32_t v;}) are accessed directly.double and int64_t are accessed with objc_copyStruct, except on GCC 4.0 where they're accessed directly with stmia/ldmia (I'm not sure if this is guaranteed to be atomic in case of interrupts).Cocoa with Love: Memory and thread-safe custom property methods gives some details on how they're implemented in runtime version objc4-371.2; obviously the precise implementation can vary between runtimes (for example, on some platforms you can use atomic swap/CAS to spin on the ivar itself instead of using another lock).
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