</p>

<p>
Reads of memory locations larger than a single machine word
are encouraged but not required to meet the same semantics
as word-sized memory locations,
observing a single allowed write <i>w</i>.
For performance reasons,
implementations may instead treat larger operations
as a set of individual machine-word-sized operations
in an unspecified order.
This means that races on multiword data structures

but only worthwhile if it's likely the instruction will be used again.
Instead, for simple one-off cases, it's possible to use the <code>BYTE</code>
and <code>WORD</code> directives
to lay down explicit data into the instruction stream within a <code>TEXT</code>.
Here's how the 386 runtime defines the 64-bit atomic load function.
</p>

<pre>