> as -pthread is supposed to switch on the POSIX memory model in gcc
Says who?
On ia64-linux it appears to be equivalent to just -D_REENTRANT, on x86-linux it also passes -lpthread to the linker, but it has no effect on code-generation.
> they don't want full sequential consistency in all cases because of its efficiency implications.
Which part of the C11 memory model requires sequential consistency?