Yes, it absolutely can. Shameless but super relevant plug. I'm (slowly) writing a series of blog posts where I simulate the implications of memory models by fuz

Yes, it absolutely can. Shameless but super relevant plug. I'm (slowly) writing a series of blog posts where I simulate the implications of memory models by fuzzing timing and ordering: https://www.reitzen.com/ https://www.reitzen.com/ I think the main reason why it hasn't been disastrous is that most programs rely on locks, and they're going to be translating that to the equivalent ARM instructions with a full memory barrier. Not too many consumer apps are going to be doing lockless algorithms, but where they're used all bets are off. You can easily imagine a queue where two threads grab the same item from, for instance.