Latch

From Oracle FAQ
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A latch is an internal Oracle mechanism used to protect data structures in the SGA from simultaneous access. Atomic hardware instructions like TEST-AND-SET are used to implement latches. Latches are more restrictive than locks in that they are always exclusive. Latches are never queued, but will spin or sleep until it obtains a resource or times out. Latches are important for performance tuning.

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