utils: Use GCC's __atomic built-ins if available

utils: Use GCC's __atomic built-ins if available

These are available since GCC 4.7 and will eventually replace the __sync
operations.  They support the memory model defined by C++11. For instance,
by using __ATOMIC_RELAXED for some operations on the reference counters we
can avoid memory barriers, which are required by __sync operations (whose
memory model essentially is __ATOMIC_SEQ_CST).