[linux-audio-dev] Re: desktop and multimedia as an afterthought?

[Tim Hockin]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 11:06:30AM -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
> >Thus, the lock-free ringbuffer is not portable. (What if the reader gets an
> >"old" value that is never updated?)
> 
> the kernel *requires* atomic operations to at least the same extent that audio
> apps do. if you can run linux on a h/w platform, then the required
> atomic ops are available.

Those atmoic ops may or may not be possible or allowed in user space by a
non-root user.

If I recall, some architectures have atomic ops only in "ring 0" (kernel
space).  Could be wrong on that...