Why does Interlocked.Exchange not support Boolean type?

Question

Is there some practical reason why the .NET team decided not to support Boolean in Interlocked.Exchange operation?

One of the usage examples is when you want to guarantee

Answer 1

Yes, there is a good reason. The implementation of the Interlocked methods requires low-level support at the processor level. See this answer for example. That's an issue when you define a framework that's architecture agnostic.

Implementing the low-lock techniques supported by the Interlocked class on data types that are a fraction of the native processor word size is difficult. The RISC approach to cpu design that was popular 10+ years ago discouraged it strongly. The mismatch between operand size and native memory bus width makes it very hard to implement. One reason that Intel's x86 architecture is still on your lap, surviving 30 years already by not taking the shortcuts. More background info on RISC in this wikipedia article.