From mailing list post https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/redis-db/QLjiQe4D7LA
In zmalloc.c the following primitives are currently used
to synchronize access to single global variable:
__sync_add_and_fetch
__sync_sub_and_fetch
In some architectures such as powerpc these primitives are overhead
intensive. More efficient C11 __atomic builtins are available with
newer GCC versions, see
http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.8.2/gcc/_005f_005fatomic-Builtins.html#_005f_005fatomic-Builtins
By substituting the following __atomic… builtins:
__atomic_add_fetch
__atomic_sub_fetch
the performance improvement on certain architectures such as powerpc can be significant,
around 10% to 15%, over the implementation using __sync builtins while there is only slight uptick on
Intel architectures because it was already enforcing Intel Strongly ordered memory semantics.
The selection of __atomic built-ins can be predicated on the definition of ATOMIC_RELAXED
which Is available on in gcc 4.8.2 and later versions.
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