concept of atomic operations in synchronization.

Atomic operations are fundamental in synchronization and concurrency control. They are operations that complete in a single step relative to other threads or processes, meaning they are indivisible and cannot be interrupted. 

In practice, this means that when an atomic operation is executed, it either completes entirely or does not occur at all, without interference from other operations. This ensures consistency and prevents race conditions where multiple threads might otherwise interfere with each other's actions.

Examples of atomic operations include incrementing a counter or swapping values. In many programming environments, atomic operations are provided through special hardware instructions or libraries designed to ensure that these operations are performed without interruption.