If writes are infrequent and readers issuing atomic operations on the same word is expensive, why not use a set of read-write locks? Reader contention on any g

If writes are infrequent and readers issuing atomic operations on the same word is expensive, why not use a set of read-write locks? Reader contention on any given lock would be amortized over the set; the cost is eaten by writers who must write-lock all the locks.