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Trail: Essential Classes
Lesson: Concurrency
Section: High Level Concurrency Objects
Concurrency
Processes and Threads
Thread Objects
Defining and Starting a Thread
Pausing Execution with Sleep
Interrupts
Joins
The SimpleThreads Example
Synchronization
Thread Interference
Memory Consistency Errors
Synchronized Methods
Intrinsic Locks and Synchronization
Atomic Access
Liveness
Deadlock
Starvation and Livelock
Guarded Blocks
Immutable Objects
A Synchronized Class Example
A Strategy for Defining Immutable Objects
High Level Concurrency Objects
Lock Objects
Executors
Executor Interfaces
Thread Pools
Concurrent Collections
Atomic Variables
For Further Reading
Questions and Exercises
Home Page > Essential Classes > Concurrency
Atomic Variables

> The `java.util.concurrent.atomic` package defines classes that support atomic operations on single variables. All classes have `get` and `set` methods that work like reads and writes on `volatile` variables. That is, a `set` has a happens-before relationship with any subsequent `get` on the same variable. The atomic `compareAndSet` method also has these memory consistency features, as do the simple atomic arithmetic methods that apply to integer atomic variables.

> To see how this package might be used, let's return to the ``Counter`` class we originally used to demonstrate thread interference:

> >     class Counter {
> >         private int c = 0;

> >         public void increment() {
> >             c++;
> >         }

> >         public void decrement() {
> >             c--;
> >         }

> >         public int value() {
> >             return c;
> >         }

> >     }

> One way to make `Counter` safe from thread interference is to make its methods synchronized, as in ``SynchronizedCounter``:

> >     class SynchronizedCounter {
> >         private int c = 0;

> >         public synchronized void increment() {
> >             c++;
> >         }

> >         public synchronized void decrement() {
> >             c--;
> >         }

> >         public synchronized int value() {
> >             return c;
> >         }

> >     }

> For this simple class, synchronization is an acceptable solution. But for a more complicated class, we might want to avoid the liveness impact of unnecessary synchronization. Replacing the `int` field with an `AtomicInteger` allows us to prevent thread interference without resorting to synchronization, as in ``AtomicCounter``:

> >     import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger;

> >     class AtomicCounter {
> >         private AtomicInteger c = new AtomicInteger(0);

> >         public void increment() {
> >             c.incrementAndGet();
> >         }

> >         public void decrement() {
> >             c.decrementAndGet();
> >         }

> >         public int value() {
> >             return c.get();
> >         }

> >     }

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