Java Memory Model & The Java Concurrency API
Introduction
Multithreading and concurrency have been staple concepts in the world of software engineering for a long time. In Java, these concepts are of paramount importance, and Java offers powerful tools to deal with concurrent programming. Understanding the Java Memory Model and the Java Concurrency API can help developers write efficient and thread-safe code.
Introduction to Java Memory Model (JMM)
The Java Memory Model (JMM) is an abstract specification that describes the behavior of threads and memory in a Java application. It’s a critical component of the Java Language Specification (JLS) and provides developers with guarantees about the visibility of variables across threads in a multithreaded environment.
The Necessity of JMM
Modern processors and compiler optimizations can result in out-of-order execution of code to enhance performance. This means that the order in which instructions are executed might differ from the order in which they are written in the source code. While this usually speeds up execution, in a multithreaded environment, it can result in threads reading stale or inconsistent values of shared variables.
