Question

Initially I thought a volatile variable was better than synchronized keyword as it did not involve BLOCKING or CONTEXT SWITCHING. But reading this I am now confused.

Is volatile implemented in a non-blocking approach using low level atomic locks or no?

Answer 1

Is volatile implemented in a non-blocking approach using low level atomic locks or no?

Volatile’s implementation varies between each processor but it is a non-blocking field load/store – it is usually implemented via memory-fences but can can also be managed with cache-coherent protocols.

I just read that post. That poster is actually incorrect in his explanations of Volatile vs Synchronized flow and someone corrected him as a comment. Volatile will not hold a lock, you may read that a volatile store is similar to a synchronized release and a volatile load is similar to a synchronized acquire but that only pertains to memory visibility and not actual implementation details