The assumption we need is that high-level statements such as x = x + 1
execute atomically, that is, without interruption from statements being
executed by other threads.
As we'll see when we discuss atomicity, this is an unreasonable asumption. However, the At-Most-Once property will let us treat statements as effectively atomic even if they're not actually atomic, if we're careful about how we write the statement.
This page last modified on 11 June 2003.