With the acquire-release semantic the memory model gets very thrilling. Because now, we have not to reason about the synchronisation of threads, now we have to reason about the synchronisation of the same atomic in different threads.

I have introduced In the post Sequential Consistency the default memory model. This model, in which all operations in all threads takes place in a global time clock, has a big advantage but also a big disadvantage.

In this post, our tour through the c++ memory model goes one step deeper. Until now, the posts were only about the atomicity of the atomic data types but now we deal with the synchronisation and ordering constraints of the operations.

In addition to booleans, there are atomics for pointers, integrals and user defined types. The rules for user-defined types are special.

The remaining atomics - in contrast to std::atomic_flag - are partial or full specialisations of the class template std::atomic. Let's start with std::atomic<bool>.

Atomics guarantee two characteristics. At one hand, they are atomic, at the other hand, they provide synchronisation and order constraints on the program execution.

The atomics are the base of the C++ memory model. Per default, sequential consistency is applied.

I created the facebook group Modernes C++. I see one big advantage in this group.

Since C++11, C++ has a memory model. It is the foundation for multithreading. Without it, multithreading is not well defined. 

In case you are using  promise and future to synchronize threads, they have a lot in common with condition variables. But most of the time, task are the better choice.