[Haskell-cafe] Relaxing atomicity of STM transactions

[Tom Hawkins]

Has anyone in the STM community considered the ability to read a TVar,
such that it would allow the transaction to complete even if the TVar
was modified by another transaction?  (I am assuming this is not how
STM works by default.)  For example:

looselyReadTVar :: TVar a -> STM a

Atom [1] has similar semantics to STM.  If Atom were to relax it's
rule atomicity in this fashion, it could open the door to improved
task scheduling and higher levels of program description.  Has STM
research already gone down this path?

-Tom

[1] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/atom