Currently, Boost doesn't provide support for atomic reference counting; shared_ptr<T> falls under 'basic' thread-safety. I propose a reference counting algorithm that falls under 'strong' thread-safety. Here is a experimental prototype I created: http://appcore.home.comcast.net/vzoom/refcount/ A SPARC 32-64 version is underway. Here is some more information on my algorithm: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.programming.threads/browse_frm/thread/4e 8717d3bcdedfe9 (initial idea; pseudo-code) http://groups.google.com/group/comp.programming.threads/msg/2f21a151d3916592 (mostly lock-free...) http://groups.google.com/group/comp.programming.threads/msg/0022ef08ae26e2f3 (async-signal-safe aspects of my algorithm) http://groups.google.com/group/comp.programming.threads/msg/667b1867c19e6288 (async-signal...) http://groups.google.com/group/comp.programming.threads/msg/9ee468f341a33ee2 (adding more async-signal-safety characteristics'...) http://groups.google.com/group/comp.programming.threads/msg/64a46f3ef24b786a http://groups.google.com/group/comp.programming.threads/msg/e363f874241bcaf4 (possible improvements...) Does anybody think that Boost could possible benefit from this level of thread-safety? Any thoughts? Thank you all for you time! -- Chris Thomasson http://appcore.home.comcast.net/ (portable lock-free data-structures)