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Double-checked locking: Clever, but broken

Do you know what synchronized <em>really</em> means?

By Brian Goetz, JavaWorld.com, 02/09/01

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However, since thread B is not executing inside a synchronized block, it may see these memory operations in a different order than the one thread A executes. It could be the case that B sees these events in the following order (and the compiler is also free to reorder the instructions like this): allocate memory, assign reference to resource, call constructor. Suppose thread B comes along after the memory has been allocated and the resource field is set, but before the constructor is called. It sees that resource is not null, skips the synchronized block, and returns a reference to a partially constructed Resource! Needless to say, the result is neither expected nor desired.

When presented with this example, many people are skeptical at first. Many highly intelligent programmers have tried to fix DCL so that it does work, but none of these supposedly fixed versions work either. It should be noted that DCL might, in fact, work on some versions of some JVMs -- as few JVMs actually implement the JMM properly. However, you don't want the correctness of your programs to rely on implementation details -- especially errors -- specific to the particular version of the particular JVM you use.

Other concurrency hazards are embedded in DCL -- and in any unsynchronized reference to memory written by another thread, even harmless-looking reads. Suppose thread A has completed initializing the Resource and exits the synchronized block as thread B enters getResource(). Now the Resource is fully initialized, and thread A flushes its local memory out to main memory. The resource's fields may reference other objects stored in memory through its member fields, which will also be flushed out. While thread B may see a valid reference to the newly created Resource, because it didn't perform a read barrier, it could still see stale values of resource's member fields.

Volatile doesn't mean what you think, either

A commonly suggested nonfix is to declare the resource field of SomeClass as volatile. However, while the JMM prevents writes to volatile variables from being reordered with respect to one another and ensures that they are flushed to main memory immediately, it still permits reads and writes of volatile variables to be reordered with respect to nonvolatile reads and writes. That means -- unless all Resource fields are volatile as well -- thread B can still perceive the constructor's effect as happening after resource is set to reference the newly created Resource.

Alternatives to DCL

The most effective way to fix the DCL idiom is to avoid it. The simplest way to avoid it, of course, is to use synchronization. Whenever a variable written by one thread is being read by another, you should use synchronization to guarantee that modifications are visible to other threads in a predictable manner.

Another option for avoiding the problems with DCL is to drop lazy initialization and instead use eager initialization. Rather than delay initialization of resource until it is first used, initialize it at construction. The class loader, which synchronizes on the classes' Class object, executes static initializer blocks at class initialization time. That means that the effect of static initializers is automatically visible to all threads as soon as the class loads.

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Resources
  • Double-checked locking idiom:
  • The Java Memory Model and multithreaded programming