Interlocked.CompareExchange using GreaterThan or LessThan instead of equality

Question

The System.Threading.Interlocked object allows for Addition (subtraction) and comparison as an atomic operation. It seems that a CompareExchange that just does

Answer 1

All interlocked operations have direct support in the hardware.

Interlocked operations and atomic data type are different things.. Atomic type is a library level feature. On some platforms and for some data types atomics are implemented using interlocked instructions. In this case they are very effective.

In other cases when platform does not have interlocked operations at all or they are not available for some particular data type, library implements these operations using appropriate synchronization (crit_sect, mutex, etc).

I am not sure if Interlocked.GreaterThan is really needed. Otherwise it might be already implemented. If your know good example where it can be useful, I am sure that everybody here will be happy to hear this.