why are some atomic_t's not volatile, while most are?

["Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@mindspring.com>]

  prompted by the earlier post on "volatile"s, is there a reason that
most atomic_t typedefs use volatile int's, while the rest don't?

$ grep "typedef.*struct"  $(find . -name atomic.h)
./include/asm-v850/atomic.h:typedef struct { int counter; } atomic_t;
./include/asm-mips/atomic.h:typedef struct { volatile int counter; } atomic_t;
./include/asm-mips/atomic.h:typedef struct { volatile long counter; } atomic64_t;
...

  etc, etc.  just curious.

rday
-- 
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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

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