(This is the documentation for SDL3, which is under heavy development and the API is changing! SDL2 is the current stable version!)

SDL_CPUPauseInstruction

A macro to insert a CPU-specific "pause" instruction into the program.

Header File

Defined in <SDL3/SDL_atomic.h>

Syntax

#define SDL_CPUPauseInstruction() DoACPUPauseInACompilerAndArchitectureSpecificWay

Remarks

This can be useful in busy-wait loops, as it serves as a hint to the CPU as to the program's intent; some CPUs can use this to do more efficient processing. On some platforms, this doesn't do anything, so using this macro might just be a harmless no-op.

Note that if you are busy-waiting, there are often more-efficient approaches with other synchronization primitives: mutexes, semaphores, condition variables, etc.

Thread Safety

This macro is safe to use from any thread.

Version

This macro is available since SDL 3.0.0.

CategoryAPI, CategoryAPIMacro, CategoryAtomic