The standard defines several 'happens before' relations that extend the good old 'sequenced before' over multiple threads:
[intro.races]11 An evaluation A simply happens before an evaluation B if either
(11.1) — A is sequenced before B, or
(11.2) — A synchronizes with B, or
(11.3) — A simply happens before X and X simply happens before B.[Note 10: In the absence of consume operations, the happens before and simply happens before relations are identical. — end note]
12 An evaluation A strongly happens before an evaluation D if, either
(12.1) — A is sequenced before D, or
(12.2) — A synchronizes with D, and both A and D are sequentially consistent atomic operations([atomics.order]), or
(12.3) — there are evaluations B and C such that A is sequenced before B, B simply happens before C, and C is sequenced before D, or
(12.4) — there is an evaluation B such that A strongly happens before B, and B strongly happens before D.[Note 11: Informally, if A strongly happens before B, then A appears to be evaluated before B in all contexts. Strongly happens before excludes consume operations. — end note]
(bold mine)
The difference between the two seems very subtle. 'Strongly happens before' is never true for matching pairs or release-acquire operations (unless both are seq-cst), but it still respects release-acquire syncronization in a way, since operations sequenced before a release 'strongly happen before' the operations sequenced after the matching acquire.
Why does this difference matter?
'Strongly happens before' was introduced in C++20, and pre-C++20, 'simply happens before' used to be called 'strongly happens before'. Why was it introduced?
[atomics.order]/4 says that the total order of all seq-cst operations is consistent with 'strongly happens before'.
Does it mean that it's not consistent with 'simply happens before'? If so, why not?
I'm ignoring the plain 'happens before', because it differs from 'simply happens before' only in its handling of memory_order_consume, the use of which is temporarily discouraged, since apparently most (all?) major compilers treat it as memory_order_acquire.
I've already seen this Q&A, but it doesn't explain why 'strongly happens before' exists, and doesn't fully address what it means (it just states that it doesn't respect release-acquire syncronization, which isn't completely the case).
Found the proposal that introduced 'simply happens before'.
I don't fully understand it, but it explains following:
- 'Strongly happens before' is a weakened version of 'simply happens before'.
- The difference is only observable when seq-cst is mixed with aqc-rel on the same variable (I think, it means when an acquire load reads a value from a seq-cst store, or when an seq-cst load reads a value from a release store). But the exact effects of mixing the two are still unclear to me.