Question

It is generally accepted (I believe!) that a lock will force any values from fields to be reloaded (essentially acting as a memory-barrier or fence – my terminology in this area gets a bit loose, I’m afraid), with the consequence that fields that are only ever accessed inside a lock do not themselves need to be volatile.

(If I’m wrong already, just say!)

A good comment was raised here, questioning whether the same is true if code does a Wait() – i.e. once it has been Pulse()d, will it reload fields from memory, or could they be in a register (etc).

Or more simply: does the field need to be volatile to ensure that the current value is obtained when resuming after a Wait()?

Looking at reflector, Wait calls down into ObjWait, which is managed internalcall (the same as Enter).

The scenario in question was:

bool closing;
public bool TryDequeue(out T value) {
    lock (queue) { // arbitrary lock-object (a private readonly ref-type)
        while (queue.Count == 0) {
            if (closing) {       // <==== (2) access field here
                value = default(T);
                return false;
            }
            Monitor.Wait(queue); // <==== (1) waits here
        }
        ...blah do something with the head of the queue
    }
}

Obviously I could just make it volatile, or I could move this out so that I exit and re-enter the Monitor every time it gets pulsed, but I’m intrigued to know if either is necessary.

Answer 1

Since the Wait() method is releasing and reacquiring the Monitor lock, if lock performs the memory fence semantics, then Monitor.Wait() will as well.

To hopefully address your comment:

The locking behavior of Monitor.Wait() is in the docs (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa332339.aspx), emphasis added:

When a thread calls Wait, it releases the lock on the object and enters the object’s waiting queue. The next thread in the object’s ready queue (if there is one) acquires the lock and has exclusive use of the object. All threads that call Wait remain in the waiting queue until they receive a signal from Pulse or PulseAll, sent by the owner of the lock. If Pulse is sent, only the thread at the head of the waiting queue is affected. If PulseAll is sent, all threads that are waiting for the object are affected. When the signal is received, one or more threads leave the waiting queue and enter the ready queue. A thread in the ready queue is permitted to reacquire the lock.

This method returns when the calling thread reacquires the lock on the object.

If you’re asking about a reference for whether a lock/acquired Monitor implies a memory barrier, the ECMA CLI spec says the following:

12.6.5 Locks and Threads:

Acquiring a lock (System.Threading.Monitor.Enter or entering a synchronized method) shall implicitly perform a volatile read operation, and releasing a lock (System.Threading.Monitor.Exit or leaving a synchronized method) shall implicitly perform a volatile write operation. See §12.6.7.

12.6.7 Volatile Reads and Writes:

A volatile read has "acquire semantics" meaning that the read is guaranteed to occur prior to any references to memory that occur after the read instruction in the CIL instruction sequence. A volatile write has "release semantics" meaning that the write is guaranteed to happen after any memory references prior to the write instruction in the CIL instruction sequence.

Also, these blog entries have some details that might be of interest:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/jaredpar/archive/2008/01/17/clr-memory-model.aspx
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/10/MemoryModels/
• http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog/2007/11/10/CLR20MemoryModel.aspx