atomic and noatomic

The last two are identical; "atomic" is the default behavior (note that it is not actually a keyword; it is specified only by the absence of nonatomic).

Assuming that you are @synthesizing the method implementations, atomic vs. non-atomic changes the generated code. If you are writing your own setter/getters, atomic/nonatomic/retain/assign/copy are merely advisory. (Note: @synthesize is now the default behavior in recent versions of LLVM. There is also no need to declare instance variables; they will be synthesized automatically, too, and will have an_ prepended to their name to prevent accidental direct access).

With "atomic", the synthesized setter/getter will ensure that a whole value is always returned from the getter or set by the setter, regardless of setter activity on any other thread. That is, if thread A is in the middle of the getter while thread B calls the setter, an actual viable value -- an autoreleased object, most likely -- will be returned to the caller in A.

In nonatomic, no such guarantees are made. Thus, nonatomic is considerably faster than "atomic".

What "atomic" does not do is make any guarantees about thread safety. If thread A is calling the getter simultaneously with thread B and C calling the setter with different values, thread A may get any one of the three values returned -- the one prior to any setters being called or either of the values passed into the setters in B and C. Likewise, the object may end up with the value from B or C, no way to tell.

Ensuring data integrity -- one of the primary challenges of multi-threaded programming -- is achieved by other means.

The last two are identical; "atomic" is the default behavior (note that it is not actually a keyword; it is specified only by the absence of nonatomic).

Assuming that you are @synthesizing the method implementations, atomic vs. non-atomic changes the generated code. If you are writing your own setter/getters, atomic/nonatomic/retain/assign/copy are merely advisory. (Note: @synthesize is now the default behavior in recent versions of LLVM. There is also no need to declare instance variables; they will be synthesized automatically, too, and will have an_ prepended to their name to prevent accidental direct access).

With "atomic", the synthesized setter/getter will ensure that a whole value is always returned from the getter or set by the setter, regardless of setter activity on any other thread. That is, if thread A is in the middle of the getter while thread B calls the setter, an actual viable value -- an autoreleased object, most likely -- will be returned to the caller in A.

In nonatomic, no such guarantees are made. Thus, nonatomic is considerably faster than "atomic".

What "atomic" does not do is make any guarantees about thread safety. If thread A is calling the getter simultaneously with thread B and C calling the setter with different values, thread A may get any one of the three values returned -- the one prior to any setters being called or either of the values passed into the setters in B and C. Likewise, the object may end up with the value from B or C, no way to tell.

Ensuring data integrity -- one of the primary challenges of multi-threaded programming -- is achieved by other means.