Java Concurrency in Practice

Chapter 15. Atomic Variables and Nonblocking Synchronization

Many of the classes in java.util.concurrent, such as Semaphore and ConcurrentLinkedQueue, provide better performance and scalability than alternatives using synchronized. In this chapter, we take a look at the primary source of this performance boost: atomic variables and nonblocking synchronization.

Much of the recent research on concurrent algorithms has focused on nonblocking algorithms, which use low-level atomic machine instructions such as compare-and-swap instead of locks to ensure data integrity under concurrent access. Nonblocking algorithms are used extensively in operating systems and JVMs for thread and process scheduling, garbage collection, and to implement locks and other ...