pyatomix 0.1.0

Cross platform atomic int for Python

pyatomix provides std::atomic_flag and std::atomic<int64_t> for Python

Compatible with Python 3.13 free-threaded. Windows users will need to have Visual Studio (or VS Build Tools) installed to build this. It uses Pybind11 and pip/setuptools will build it automatically. It's been tested on Windows and Linux.

Linux users will need the Python dev package installed for their Python version to install atomix, for instance: python3.13-dev

Installation

pip install -U pyatomix
-or-
git clone https://github.com/0xDEADFED5/pyatomix.git
pip install -U ./pyatomix

Usage

from pyatomix import AtomicInt, AtomicFlag
x = AtomicInt(7)     # initial value of 7
x += 1               # now it's 8, this is atomic
y = AtomicFlag()     # y == False
z = y.test_and_set() # z == False, y == True
y.clear()            # y == False

the API is exactly the same as std::atomic and std::atomic_flag. all the math operators except **, >>, <<=, >>, >>= are overridden for AtomicInt.

atomic assignment operators: +=, -=, &=, |=, ^= (using these are an atomic operation)

other assignment operators like %=,/=,//=,*= first load the value, then store the modified value. those operators are thread-safe, but not atomic.

Performance

Depending on compiler and OS, AtomicInt increment is 4-6x slower than a standard increment, which is still pretty fast. 1 million atomic increments in a for loop takes me 160ms in Linux, while incrementing a regular int 1 million times takes 40ms.

To run the tests

from pyatomix import AtomicTest
x = AtomicTest()
x.run()

NOTE: the AtomicFlag test will hang unless you're running a free-threaded build of Python

API list, all these are atomic

AtomicInt.is_lock_free() -> bool   : returns True if it's lock free, should be True for most
AtomicInt.store(value) -> None     : assign value, doesn't return anything
AtomicInt.load() -> int            : read value
AtomicInt.fetch_add(value) -> int  : add to current value, return previous value
AtomicInt.fetch_sub(value) -> int  : subtract from current value, return previous value
AtomicInt.exchange(value) -> int   : assign value, return previous value
AtomicInt.compare_exchange(expected, value) -> bool : 
    if current value == expected, replace it with value. returns True on success.
AtomicInt.compare_exchange_weak(expected, value) -> bool : 
    same as compare_exchange, but may fail spuriously. faster on some platforms, use in a loop.

AtomicFlag.clear() -> None        : set value to False
AtomicFlag.test_and_set() -> bool : set value to True and return previous value
AtomicFlag.test() -> bool         : read value
AtomicFlag.wait(bool cmp) -> bool : if current value == cmp, wait until signaled
AtomicFlag.notify_one() -> None   : notify one or more threads that the value has changed
AtomicFlag.notify_all() -> None   : notify all threads that the value has changed

AtomicFlag overloaded operators:

==,!= (will work with "falsy" types too)

AtomicInt overloaded operators:

==,!=,-,~,+,+=,-=,*,*=,/,/=,//,//=,|,|=,%,%=,&,&=,^,^=,>,>=,<,<=

(trying to use anything other than an int with these will fail)