Weird vmstat -s stats

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2003-Jul-05 18:55:43 -0400, Chuck Swiger <cswiger at mac.com> wrote:
>Farid Hajji wrote:
>[ ... ]
>>Shouldn't such counters be at least 64 bit wide?
>
>You betcha.  :-)  The problem is that a 32-bit CPU, like the Intel x86 
>family, can't increment a 64-bit counter atomicly.

This isn't absolutely true.  You _can_ perform atomic 64-bit
operations on an x86 (for x>=5), they are just extremely expensive.

There are regular threads on this sort of problem and I don't believe
anyone has come up with a solution that did not involve overheads that
were considered unacceptable in the general case.

Peter