Why doesn't volatile in java 5+ ensure visibility from another thread?

Question

According to:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-jtp03304/

Under the new memory model, when thread A writes to a volatile variable V, and thread B reads from V, any variable values that were visible to A at the time that V was written are guaranteed now to be visible to B

And many places on the internet state that the following code should never print "error":

public class Test {
    volatile static private int a;
    static private int b;

    public static void main(String [] args) throws Exception {
        for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
            new Thread() {

                @Override
                public void run() {
                    int tt = b; // makes the jvm cache the value of b

                    while (a==0) {

                    }

                    if (b == 0) {
                        System.out.println("error");
                    }
                }

            }.start();
        }

        b = 1;
        a = 1;
    }
}

b should be 1 for all the threads when a is 1.

However I sometimes get "error" printed. How is this possible?

Answer 1

Update:

For anyone interested this bug has been addressed and fixed for Java 7u6 build b14. You can see the bug report/fixes here

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Original Answer

When thinking in terms of memory visibility/order you would need to think about its happens-before relationship. The important pre condition for b != 0 is for a == 1. If a != 1 then b can be either 0 or 1.

Once a thread sees a == 1 then that thread is guaranteed to see b == 1.

Post Java 5, in the OP example, once the while(a == 0) breaks out b is guaranteed to be 1

Edit:

I ran the simulation many number of times and didn't see your output.

What OS, Java version & CPU are you testing under?

I am on Windows 7, Java 1.6_24 (trying with _31)

Edit 2:

Kudos to the OP and Walter Laan - For me it only happened when I switched from 64 bit Java to 32 bit Java, on (but may not be excluded to) a 64 bit windows 7.

Edit 3:

The assignment to tt, or rather the staticget of b seems to have a significant impact (to prove this remove the int tt = b; and it should always work.

It appears the load of b into tt will store the field locally which will then be used in the if coniditonal (the reference to that value not tt). So if b == 0 is true it probably means that the local store to tt was 0 (at this point its a race to assign 1 to local tt). This seems only to be true for 32 Bit Java 1.6 & 7 with client set.

I compared the two output assembly and the immediate difference was here. (Keep in mind these are snippets).

This printed "error"

 0x021dd753: test   %eax,0x180100      ;   {poll}
  0x021dd759: cmp    $0x0,%ecx
  0x021dd75c: je     0x021dd748         ;*ifeq
                                        ; - Test$1::run@7 (line 13)
  0x021dd75e: cmp    $0x0,%edx
  0x021dd761: jne    0x021dd788         ;*ifne
                                        ; - Test$1::run@13 (line 17)
  0x021dd767: nop    
  0x021dd768: jmp    0x021dd7b8         ;   {no_reloc}
  0x021dd76d: xchg   %ax,%ax
  0x021dd770: jmp    0x021dd7d2         ; implicit exception: dispatches to 0x021dd7c2
  0x021dd775: nop                       ;*getstatic out
                                        ; - Test$1::run@16 (line 18)
  0x021dd776: cmp    (%ecx),%eax        ; implicit exception: dispatches to 0x021dd7dc
  0x021dd778: mov    $0x39239500,%edx   ;*invokevirtual println

And

This did not print "error"

0x0226d763: test   %eax,0x180100      ;   {poll}
  0x0226d769: cmp    $0x0,%edx
  0x0226d76c: je     0x0226d758         ;*ifeq
                                        ; - Test$1::run@7 (line 13)
  0x0226d76e: mov    $0x341b77f8,%edx   ;   {oop('Test')}
  0x0226d773: mov    0x154(%edx),%edx   ;*getstatic b
                                        ; - Test::access$0@0 (line 3)
                                        ; - Test$1::run@10 (line 17)
  0x0226d779: cmp    $0x0,%edx
  0x0226d77c: jne    0x0226d7a8         ;*ifne
                                        ; - Test$1::run@13 (line 17)
  0x0226d782: nopw   0x0(%eax,%eax,1)
  0x0226d788: jmp    0x0226d7ed         ;   {no_reloc}
  0x0226d78d: xchg   %ax,%ax
  0x0226d790: jmp    0x0226d807         ; implicit exception: dispatches to 0x0226d7f7
  0x0226d795: nop                       ;*getstatic out
                                        ; - Test$1::run@16 (line 18)
  0x0226d796: cmp    (%ecx),%eax        ; implicit exception: dispatches to 0x0226d811
  0x0226d798: mov    $0x39239500,%edx   ;*invokevirtual println

In this example the first entry is from a run that printed "error" while the second was from one which didnt.

It seems that the working run loaded and assigned b correctly before testing it equal to 0.

  0x0226d76e: mov    $0x341b77f8,%edx   ;   {oop('Test')}
  0x0226d773: mov    0x154(%edx),%edx   ;*getstatic b
                                        ; - Test::access$0@0 (line 3)
                                        ; - Test$1::run@10 (line 17)
  0x0226d779: cmp    $0x0,%edx
  0x0226d77c: jne    0x0226d7a8         ;*ifne
                                        ; - Test$1::run@13 (line 17)

While the run that printed "error" loaded the cached version of %edx

  0x021dd75e: cmp    $0x0,%edx
  0x021dd761: jne    0x021dd788         ;*ifne
                                        ; - Test$1::run@13 (line 17)

For those who have more experience with assembler please weigh in :)

Edit 4

Should be my last edit, as the concurrency dev's get a hand on it, I did test with and without the int tt = b; assignment some more. I found that when I increase the max from 100 to 1000 there seems to be a 100% error rate when int tt = b is included and a 0% chance when it is excluded.

Answer 2

Based on the extract from JCiP below, I would have thought that your example should never print "error":

The visibility effects of volatile variables extend beyond the value of the volatile variable itself. When a thread A writes to a volatile variable and subsequently thread B reads that same variable, the values of all variables that were visible to A prior to writing to the volatile variable become visible to B after reading the volatile variable.

Answer 3

You might want to check out a discussion thread on the concurrency interest mailing list on this question: http://cs.oswego.edu/pipermail/concurrency-interest/2012-May/009440.html

It seems like the problem is more easily reproduced with the client JVM (-client).

Answer 4

in My opinion,The Problem acurred due to Lack of Synchronization :

NOTICE : if b=1 heppens before a=1, and a is volatile while b is not, then b=1 actually updates for all threads only after a=1 is finished (according to the quate's logic).

what heppend in your code is that b=1 was first updated for the main process only, then only when the volatile assignment finished, all the threads b's updated. I think that maybe assignments of volatile are not working as atomic operations (needs to point far, and somehow update rest of refernces to act like volatiles) so this would be my guess why one thread read b=0 instead of b=1.

Consider this change to the code, that shows my claim:

public class Test {
    volatile static private int a;
    static private int b;
    private static Object lock = new Object();


    public static void main(String [] args) throws Exception {
        for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
            new Thread() {

                @Override
                public void run() {
                    int tt = b; // makes the jvm cache the value of b

                    while (true) {
                        synchronized (lock ) {
                            if (a!=0) break;
                         }
                    }

                    if (b == 0) {
                        System.out.println("error");
                    }
                }

            }.start();
        }
        b = 1;
        synchronized (lock ) {
        a = 1;
        }  
    }
}