built-in atomic functions

[manju k <m_a_n_j_u_s_k at yahoo dot com>]

Hello,

Are there any new built-in implementations equivalent to atomic_read and 
atomic_write in latest releases ?
if not should I rely on trick suggested in one of the earlier discussions as 
below ?

  ">>We don't have atomic read or atomic write builtins (ok, you could

>>abuse __sync_fetch_and_add (&x, 0) for atomic read and a loop
>>with __sync_compare_and_swap_val for atomic store, but that's a horrible
>>overkill."
Also I am looking for atomic_set, I do not see any __sync* functions.
but from atomic.h, atomic_set just does a normal assignment, so doing the same 
should be safe enough?

Thanks for any help.

Thanks and Regards,
Manju