And so Java effectively mandates at least max(32, size of Object)-bit atomic writes, while C can trivially run on 16-bit systems. I don't know if anyone's runni

And so Java effectively mandates at least max(32, size of Object)-bit atomic writes, while C can trivially run on 16-bit systems. I don't know if anyone's running multi-threaded software on such, but having a completely arbitrary boundary (from the point-of-view of a programmer wanting to store an integer) for what does and doesn't behave sanely is far from nice.