Question

Are there any concurrency problems with one thread reading from one index of an array, while another thread writes to another index of the array, as long as the indices are different?

e.g. (this example not necessarily recommended for real use, only to illustrate my point)

 class Test1
 {
     static final private int N = 4096;
     final private int[] x = new int[N];
     final private AtomicInteger nwritten = new AtomicInteger(0);
     // invariant: 
     // all values x[i] where 0 <= i < nwritten.get() are immutable

     // read() is not synchronized since we want it to be fast
     int read(int index) {
         if (index >= nwritten.get())
             throw new IllegalArgumentException();
         return x[index];
     }
     // write() is synchronized to handle multiple writers
     // (using compare-and-set techniques to avoid blocking algorithms
     // is nontrivial)
     synchronized void write(int x_i) {
         int index = nwriting.get();
         if (index >= N)
             throw SomeExceptionThatIndicatesArrayIsFull();
         x[index] = x_i;
         // from this point forward, x[index] is fixed in stone
         nwriting.set(index+1);
     }     
 }

edit: critiquing this example is not my question, I literally just want to know if array access to one index, concurrently to access of another index, poses concurrency problems, couldn’t think of a simple example.

Answer 1

While you will not get an invalid state by changing arrays as you mention, you will have the same problem that happens when two threads are viewing a non volatile integer without synchronization (see the section in the Java Tutorial on Memory Consistency Errors). Basically, the problem is that Thread 1 may write a value in space i, but there is no guarantee when (or if) Thread 2 will see the change.

The class java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicIntegerArray does what you want to do.