[ibraheemdev]

It does make a difference of course if you're running fetch_max from multiple threads, adding a load fast-path introduces a race condition.

[masklinn]

Does it tho? Assuming no torn reads/writes at those sizes, given the location should be strictly increasing are there situations where you could read a higher-than-stored value which would cause skipping a necessary update?

Afaik on all of x86, arm, and riscv an atomic load of a word sized datum is just a regular load.

[gpderetta]

It doesn't need to be strictly increasing some other thread could be making other arbitrary operations. Still even in that case, as Dylan16807 pointed out, it likely doesn't matter.