Using a pure spin lock for a critical section in a preemptable thread
is always wrong, however short the critical section may be. The thread
might be preempted, which will cause all other threads to hammer
busily at the core for the whole quant. Moreover, if threads have
different priorities, this might lead to a priority inversion problem
and a deadlock. More generally, a spinlock is not more efficient than
a well-written mutex, which typically does several spin iterations at
the start anyway.

The advise about UP vs SMP is also irrelevant in the context of
preemptive threads.