VarHandles on non-int-sized fields and atomic operations

[Martin Buchholz]

On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 1:16 PM, Martin Buchholz <martinrb at google.com> wrote:
> So it is likely that
> atomic<short>
> will be stored in a 32-bit field, since the cpu is likely to have a
> 32-bit cas, but not 16-bit cas.

So apparently you can still store your atomic<short> in 16 bits, by
implementing strong CAS and atomic assignment using read+mask+cas on
enclosing 32 bits in a loop.  But if you knew ahead of time that your
short was going to be atomic, you might want to give it those extra 16
bits anyways?