A thread of execution (also known as a thread) is a single flow of control within a program, including the initial invocation of a specific top-level function, and recursively including every function invocation subsequently executed by the thread. [ Note: When one thread creates another, the initial call to the top-level function of the new thread is executed by the new thread, not by the creating thread. — end note ] Every thread in a program can potentially access every object and function in a program.10 Under a hosted implementation, a C++ program can have more than one thread running concurrently. The execution of each thread proceeds as defined by the remainder of this standard. The execution of the entire program consists of an execution of all of its threads. [ Note: Usually the execution can be viewed as an interleaving of all its threads. However, some kinds of atomic operations, for example, allow executions inconsistent with a simple interleaving, as described below. — end note ] Under a freestanding implementation, it is implementation-defined whether a program can have more than one thread of execution.
Implementations should ensure that all unblocked threads eventually make progress. [ Note: Standard library functions may silently block on I/O or locks. Factors in the execution environment, including externally-imposed thread priorities, may prevent an implementation from making certain guarantees of forward progress. — end note ]
The value of an object visible to a thread T at a particular point is the initial value of the object, a value assigned to the object by T, or a value assigned to the object by another thread, according to the rules below. [ Note: In some cases, there may instead be undefined behavior. Much of this section is motivated by the desire to support atomic operations with explicit and detailed visibility constraints. However, it also implicitly supports a simpler view for more restricted programs. — end note ]
Two expression evaluations conflict if one of them modifies a memory location ([intro.memory]) and the other one accesses or modifies the same memory location.
The library defines a number of atomic operations (Clause [atomics]) and operations on mutexes (Clause [thread]) that are specially identified as synchronization operations. These operations play a special role in making assignments in one thread visible to another. A synchronization operation on one or more memory locations is either a consume operation, an acquire operation, a release operation, or both an acquire and release operation. A synchronization operation without an associated memory location is a fence and can be either an acquire fence, a release fence, or both an acquire and release fence. In addition, there are relaxed atomic operations, which are not synchronization operations, and atomic read-modify-write operations, which have special characteristics. [ Note: For example, a call that acquires a mutex will perform an acquire operation on the locations comprising the mutex. Correspondingly, a call that releases the same mutex will perform a release operation on those same locations. Informally, performing a release operation on A forces prior side effects on other memory locations to become visible to other threads that later perform a consume or an acquire operation on A. “Relaxed” atomic operations are not synchronization operations even though, like synchronization operations, they cannot contribute to data races. — end note ]
All modifications to a particular atomic object M occur in some particular total order, called the modification order of M. If A and B are modifications of an atomic object M and A happens before (as defined below) B, then A shall precede B in the modification order of M, which is defined below. [ Note: This states that the modification orders must respect the “happens before” relationship. — end note ] [ Note: There is a separate order for each atomic object. There is no requirement that these can be combined into a single total order for all objects. In general this will be impossible since different threads may observe modifications to different objects in inconsistent orders. — end note ]
A release sequence headed by a release operation A on an atomic object M is a maximal contiguous sub-sequence of side effects in the modification order of M, where the first operation is A, and every subsequent operation
is performed by the same thread that performed A, or
is an atomic read-modify-write operation.
Certain library calls synchronize with other library calls performed by another thread. For example, an atomic store-release synchronizes with a load-acquire that takes its value from the store ([atomics.order]). [ Note: Except in the specified cases, reading a later value does not necessarily ensure visibility as described below. Such a requirement would sometimes interfere with efficient implementation. — end note ] [ Note: The specifications of the synchronization operations define when one reads the value written by another. For atomic objects, the definition is clear. All operations on a given mutex occur in a single total order. Each mutex acquisition “reads the value written” by the last mutex release. — end note ]
An evaluation A carries a dependency to an evaluation B if
the value of A is used as an operand of B, unless:
B is an invocation of any specialization of std::kill_dependency ([atomics.order]), or
A is the left operand of a built-in logical AND (&&, see [expr.log.and]) or logical OR (||, see [expr.log.or]) operator, or
A is the left operand of a conditional (?:, see [expr.cond]) operator, or
A is the left operand of the built-in comma (,) operator ([expr.comma]);
or
A writes a scalar object or bit-field M, B reads the value written by A from M, and A is sequenced before B, or
for some evaluation X, A carries a dependency to X, and X carries a dependency to B.
[ Note: “Carries a dependency to” is a subset of “is sequenced before”, and is similarly strictly intra-thread. — end note ]
An evaluation A is dependency-ordered before an evaluation B if
A performs a release operation on an atomic object M, and, in another thread, B performs a consume operation on M and reads a value written by any side effect in the release sequence headed by A, or
for some evaluation X, A is dependency-ordered before X and X carries a dependency to B.
[ Note: The relation “is dependency-ordered before” is analogous to “synchronizes with”, but uses release/consume in place of release/acquire. — end note ]
An evaluation A inter-thread happens before an evaluation B if
for some evaluation X
[ Note: The “inter-thread happens before” relation describes arbitrary concatenations of “sequenced before”, “synchronizes with” and “dependency-ordered before” relationships, with two exceptions. The first exception is that a concatenation is not permitted to end with “dependency-ordered before” followed by “sequenced before”. The reason for this limitation is that a consume operation participating in a “dependency-ordered before” relationship provides ordering only with respect to operations to which this consume operation actually carries a dependency. The reason that this limitation applies only to the end of such a concatenation is that any subsequent release operation will provide the required ordering for a prior consume operation. The second exception is that a concatenation is not permitted to consist entirely of “sequenced before”. The reasons for this limitation are (1) to permit “inter-thread happens before” to be transitively closed and (2) the “happens before” relation, defined below, provides for relationships consisting entirely of “sequenced before”. — end note ]
An evaluation A happens before an evaluation B if:
The implementation shall ensure that no program execution demonstrates a cycle in the “happens before” relation. [ Note: This cycle would otherwise be possible only through the use of consume operations. — end note ]
A visible side effect A on a scalar object or bit-field M with respect to a value computation B of M satisfies the conditions:
The value of a non-atomic scalar object or bit-field M, as determined by evaluation B, shall be the value stored by the visible side effect A. [ Note: If there is ambiguity about which side effect to a non-atomic object or bit-field is visible, then the behavior is either unspecified or undefined. — end note ] [ Note: This states that operations on ordinary objects are not visibly reordered. This is not actually detectable without data races, but it is necessary to ensure that data races, as defined below, and with suitable restrictions on the use of atomics, correspond to data races in a simple interleaved (sequentially consistent) execution. — end note ]
The visible sequence of side effects on an atomic object M, with respect to a value computation B of M, is a maximal contiguous sub-sequence of side effects in the modification order of M, where the first side effect is visible with respect to B, and for every side effect, it is not the case that B happens before it. The value of an atomic object M, as determined by evaluation B, shall be the value stored by some operation in the visible sequence of M with respect to B. [ Note: It can be shown that the visible sequence of side effects of a value computation is unique given the coherence requirements below. — end note ]
If an operation A that modifies an atomic object M happens before an operation B that modifies M, then A shall be earlier than B in the modification order of M. [ Note: This requirement is known as write-write coherence. — end note ]
If a value computation A of an atomic object M happens before a value computation B of M, and A takes its value from a side effect X on M, then the value computed by B shall either be the value stored by X or the value stored by a side effect Y on M, where Y follows X in the modification order of M. [ Note: This requirement is known as read-read coherence. — end note ]
If a value computation A of an atomic object M happens before an operation B on M, then A shall take its value from a side effect X on M, where X precedes B in the modification order of M. [ Note: This requirement is known as read-write coherence. — end note ]
If a side effect X on an atomic object M happens before a value computation B of M, then the evaluation B shall take its value from X or from a side effect Y that follows X in the modification order of M. [ Note: This requirement is known as write-read coherence. — end note ]
[ Note: The four preceding coherence requirements effectively disallow compiler reordering of atomic operations to a single object, even if both operations are relaxed loads. This effectively makes the cache coherence guarantee provided by most hardware available to C++ atomic operations. — end note ]
[ Note: The visible sequence of side effects depends on the “happens before” relation, which depends on the values observed by loads of atomics, which we are restricting here. The intended reading is that there must exist an association of atomic loads with modifications they observe that, together with suitably chosen modification orders and the “happens before” relation derived as described above, satisfy the resulting constraints as imposed here. — end note ]
The execution of a program contains a data race if it contains two conflicting actions in different threads, at least one of which is not atomic, and neither happens before the other. Any such data race results in undefined behavior. [ Note: It can be shown that programs that correctly use mutexes and memory_order_seq_cst operations to prevent all data races and use no other synchronization operations behave as if the operations executed by their constituent threads were simply interleaved, with each value computation of an object being taken from the last side effect on that object in that interleaving. This is normally referred to as “sequential consistency”. However, this applies only to data-race-free programs, and data-race-free programs cannot observe most program transformations that do not change single-threaded program semantics. In fact, most single-threaded program transformations continue to be allowed, since any program that behaves differently as a result must perform an undefined operation. — end note ]
[ Note: Compiler transformations that introduce assignments to a potentially shared memory location that would not be modified by the abstract machine are generally precluded by this standard, since such an assignment might overwrite another assignment by a different thread in cases in which an abstract machine execution would not have encountered a data race. This includes implementations of data member assignment that overwrite adjacent members in separate memory locations. Reordering of atomic loads in cases in which the atomics in question may alias is also generally precluded, since this may violate the “visible sequence” rules. — end note ]
[ Note: Transformations that introduce a speculative read of a potentially shared memory location may not preserve the semantics of the C++ program as defined in this standard, since they potentially introduce a data race. However, they are typically valid in the context of an optimizing compiler that targets a specific machine with well-defined semantics for data races. They would be invalid for a hypothetical machine that is not tolerant of races or provides hardware race detection. — end note ]
The implementation may assume that any thread will eventually do one of the following:
terminate,
make a call to a library I/O function,
access or modify a volatile object, or
perform a synchronization operation or an atomic operation.
[ Note: This is intended to allow compiler transformations such as removal of empty loops, even when termination cannot be proven. — end note ]
An implementation should ensure that the last value (in modification order) assigned by an atomic or synchronization operation will become visible to all other threads in a finite period of time.
An object with automatic or thread storage duration ([basic.stc]) is associated with one specific thread, and can be accessed by a different thread only indirectly through a pointer or reference ([basic.compound]).