Hey r/programming!

I wrote a comprehensive article on constructing a mutex from scratch.

It covers:
- Data races: what happens at the register level, and how parallel access can go wrong
- Atomics & Memory Ordering: why atomics work and what each memory ordering does (Aq/Rel/AqRel/SeqCst)
- Spin lock & Guards: Building a simple mutual exclusion lock via an AtomicBool, and providing safe access to the protected data
- And finally, Mutexes: A more complex mutual exclusion primitive that can achieve better performance via thread::park/::unpark

The article benchmarks and compares the performance of both a spinlock and Mutex to understand when to use which.

Have you ever noticed a massive performance boost from switching from one synchronization primitive to another?
Feedback on the article is also appreciated!