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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007What is the noun form of "atomic" ?
Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or "quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of indivisible ? "Indivisibility" does not have the right ring to it. Any ideas ? > Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or > "quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Any ideas ? Atomicity.  SignatureSalvatore Volatile > > Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or > > "quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > -- > Salvatore Volatile No, it's atomicitousness. Seriously, the noun form of atomic is atom. >>> Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or >>> "quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > > Seriously, the noun form of atomic is atom. Be that as it may, the answer to richardchaven's question is "atomicity". > >>> Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or > >>> "quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > > Be that as it may, the answer to richardchaven's question is "atomicity". Use it in a sentence. > >>> Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or > >>> "quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > > Be that as it may, the answer to richardchaven's question is "atomicity". Use it in a sentence. >> Be that as it may, the answer to richardchaven's question is "atomicity". > > Use it in a sentence. And so here we'll stay Till the very day We find out what atomicity means. [With apologies to Kermit the Frog] SignaturePeter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses. The optusnet address could disappear at any time. >>>>> Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or >>>>> "quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of >>>>> indivisible ? >> ... the answer to richardchaven's question is "atomicity". > Use it in a sentence. "The atomicity of ln(1) makes it a safe way to implement a semaphore." SignatureMark Brader "The design of the lowercase e in text faces Toronto produces strong feelings (or should do so)." msb@vex.net -- Walter Tracy >>>>>> Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or >>>>>> "quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > "The atomicity of ln(1) makes it a safe way to implement a semaphore." Lovely example. Explains why my home directory very slowly fills up with lock files left behind by application crashes, too. SignatureRoland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food. NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it. vorotyntsev@yahoo.com filted: >> Be that as it may, the answer to richardchaven's question is "atomicity". > >Use it in a sentence. He just did....r Signature"Keep your eye on the Bishop. I want to know when he makes his move", said the Inspector, obliquely. > vorotyntsev@yahoo.com filted: >> [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > He just did....r Not so. He mentioned it. He did not use it. He did, however, use "it". SignatureRoland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food. NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it. >> >>> Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or >> >>> "quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > > Use it in a sentence. The atomicity of the increment operator ensures that the resulting count will be correct in the face of simultaneous updates in different threads, which might not be the case if normal addition and assignment were used. For those who are curious, a non-atomic increment would have three steps: 1. Read the current value 2. Compute the new value by adding one 3. Store the new value If two separate entities try to do this at roughly the same time, it is quite possible to have the following scenario: Counter holds 5 A.1 Entity A learns that the value is 5 A.2 Entity A computes the new value to be 6 B.1 Entity B learns that the value is 5 B.2 Entity B computes the new value to be 6 B.3 Entity B stores 6 as the new value A.3 Entity A stores 6 as the new value We started at 5, incremented twice, and came up with a value of 6. If the increment is atomic, this can't happen: either A's increment happens completely before B's starts or B's happens completely before A's starts, so we have to wind up with 7. SignatureEvan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------ HP Laboratories |First Law of Anthropology: 1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 | If they're doing something you Palo Alto, CA 94304 | don't understand, it's either an | isolated lunatic, a religious kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com | ritual, or art. (650)857-7572 http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ > For those who are curious, a non-atomic increment would have three > steps: [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > We started at 5, incremented twice, and came up with a value of 6. If > the increment is atomic, this can't happen... It's even worse if we imagine a "store" operation that itself is non-atomic, writing to the different bits individually. Then when the first entity overwrites the stored value 5 with 6, it will intermediately take on the value 4 or 7, depending on which bit changes first. If the other entity chooses that moment to read it, the final result could be 5 or 8 -- or still other values if it can complete the computation and start storing bits before the first one finishes storing its result. The standard for the programming language C addresses such issues using the concept of "sequence points", and in a situation where there are no sequence points to prevent potentially overlapping accesses such as Evan and I describe, the standard allows the program to do *anything*.[1] (In particular, none of the common expressions to increment a variable produces, by itself, a sequence point.) If someone wants to implement standard C on a machine where storing a value is a non-atomic operation, the standard will not prevent it. Caveat programmor. [1] As John F. Woods put it in a 1992 comp.std.c posting: "demons may fly out of your nose." The joke was soon summarized by the phrase "nasal demons" and is still repeated in the C newsgroups to this day. SignatureMark Brader At any rate, C++ != C. Actually, the value of Toronto the expression "C++ != C" is [undefined]. msb@vex.net -- Peter da Silva My text in this article is in the public domain. > The standard for the programming language C addresses such issues > using the concept of "sequence points", and in a situation where > there are no sequence points to prevent potentially overlapping > accesses such as Evan and I describe, the standard allows the > program to do *anything*.[1] Actually, sequence points are there to constrain what the compiler is allowed to do within a single thread (which is all that C really knows about). If there's more than one thread hammering on a particular variable, all bets are off and you have to use higher-level synchronization mechanisms or low-level atomic operations. Or trust to luck. My first patent was, in part, for a mechanism for implementing a counter when (1) you didn't have atomic operations to take advantage of, (2) you couldn't afford the overhead of a mutex, (3) you didn't really care about the value of the counter, but you needed to know when (and as soon as) it got back down to zero, and (4) once it hit zero, it would never move again. The solution we came up with was probabilistic, but the probability of failure (requiring multiple context switches between the same two threads very close together) was tolerable. SignatureEvan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------ HP Laboratories |Those who study history are doomed 1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |to watch others repeat it. Palo Alto, CA 94304 kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com (650)857-7572 http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ Mark Brader: > > The standard for the programming language C addresses such issues > > using the concept of "sequence points", and in a situation where > > there are no sequence points to prevent potentially overlapping > > accesses such as Evan and I describe, the standard allows the > > program to do *anything*. Evan Kirshenbaum: > Actually, sequence points are there to constrain what the compiler is > allowed to do within a single thread (which is all that C really knows > about). If there's more than one thread hammering on a particular > variable, all bets are off and you have to use higher-level > synchronization mechanisms or low-level atomic operations. You say "actually" as if this was a correction. Multiple threads or processes are, as you say, outside the scope of the language. > Or trust to luck. My first patent was, in part, for a mechanism for > implementing a counter when (1) you didn't have atomic operations to > take advantage of, (2) you couldn't afford the overhead of a mutex... Not bad! SignatureMark Brader | "I have on occasion manufactured technical terms that Toronto | have made it into common use in the literature. msb@vex.net | But not many, and I'm licensed." --John Lawler My text in this article is in the public domain. > Mark Brader: >> > The standard for the programming language C addresses such issues [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > You say "actually" as if this was a correction. Multiple threads or > processes are, as you say, outside the scope of the language. That's why I said "actually". I don't consider thread contention to be the type of issue that sequence points were introduced to address, which seemed to be what you were implying. >> Or trust to luck. My first patent was, in part, for a mechanism for >> implementing a counter when (1) you didn't have atomic operations to >> take advantage of, (2) you couldn't afford the overhead of a mutex... > > Not bad! Thanks. SignatureEvan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------ HP Laboratories |On a scale of one to ten... 1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |it sucked. Palo Alto, CA 94304 kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com (650)857-7572 http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ I (Mark Brader) and Evan Kirshenbaum write: >>>> The standard for the programming language C addresses such issues >>>> using the concept of "sequence points" ... >>> Actually, sequence points are there to constrain what the compiler >>> is allowed to do within a single thread (which is all that C really >>> knows about). If there's more than one thread hammering on a >>> particular variable, all bets are off ... >> You say "actually" as if this was a correction. Multiple threads or >> processes are, as you say, outside the scope of the language. > That's why I said "actually". I don't consider thread contention to > be the type of issue that sequence points were introduced to address, > which seemed to be what you were implying. The issue that sequence points were introduced to address was the conflict between programmers desiring a language where the order of operations was fully specified and implementers desiring one where it was maximally flexible. The resolution of the issue is that the user can assume things are fully specified as of each sequence point, but the implementer can do things in any order between sequence points, and the user must not write code that would be affected by the order. In this, "simultaneously" is a possible order, irrespective of whether there are threads in the context that Evan refers to, and this is precisely why nasal demons are a possibility. SignatureMark Brader, Toronto | "When you're up to your a.s in alligators, maybe msb@vex.net | you're in the wrong swamp." -- Bill Stewart My text in this article is in the public domain. >> Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or >> "quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > Atomicity. Opinions are split on that one. SignatureSkitt Jes' fine >>> Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or >>> "quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > Opinions are split on that one. Atomicity. SignatureMark Brader "'A matter of opinion'[?] I have to say you are Toronto right. There['s] your opinion, which is wrong, msb@vex.net and mine, which is right." -- Gene Ward Smith >>>>Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or >>>>"quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > Atomicity. Sal's joke bombed. --Jeff SignatureThe shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. --Stendhal >>>>> Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or >>>>> "quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > > Sal's joke bombed. Hey! It was my joke. SignatureSkitt (in Hayward, California) http://www.geocities.com/opus731/ >>>>>> Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or >>>>>> "quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > > Hey! It was my joke. Sorry. I don't know why Mark deleted the attributions. --Jeff SignatureThe shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. --Stendhal >Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or >"quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > >Any ideas ? Individual. SignatureSteve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk richardchaven filted: >Just as "performance" or "speed" is the noun form of "fast" (or >"quickly"), what is the noun form of "atomic" in the sense of >indivisible ? > >"Indivisibility" does not have the right ring to it. Nonetheless, it is as near the right word as any you're going to find...note that the word "atom" comes from the Greek roots "a-" ("not") and "tomos" ("to cut"), so an atom is simply that which can't be cut into smaller pieces....r Signature"Keep your eye on the Bishop. I want to know when he makes his move", said the Inspector, obliquely. > richardchaven filted: >> [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > ("not") and "tomos" ("to cut"), so an atom is simply that which > can't be cut into smaller pieces....r In computer science, the word is "atomicity". When you guarantee the atomicity of an operation, you guarantee that it all happens or all fails to happen: it can't fail partway through without undoing any changes it may have made and nobody can observe it when it's made some, but not all, changes or change the things it depends on after it's observed them but before it finishes. Actually, come to think of it, the word has somewhat different senses in different branches of computer science. In databases, atomicitity is one of the ACID properties (along with consistency, isolation, and durability), and database people would consider that the last property I mentioned, that logically everything else happens either before or after the atomic operation, is isolation, not atomicity. But someone talking about, e.g., an atomic increment operation would have that as their primary meaning. SignatureEvan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------ HP Laboratories |A specification which calls for 1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |network-wide use of encryption, but Palo Alto, CA 94304 |invokes the Tooth Fairy to handle |key distribution, is a useless kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com |farce. (650)857-7572 | Henry Spencer http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ >richardchaven filted: >> [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] >that the word "atom" comes from the Greek roots "a-" ("not") and "tomos" ("to >cut"), so an atom is simply that which can't be cut into smaller pieces....r It's elementary. I just wish the OP had been called Watson. SignaturePaul In bocca al Lupo! |
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