javamultithreadingthreadpoolvolatilenon-volatile

Why threads do not cache object locally?


I have a String and ThreadPoolExecutor that changes the value of this String. Just check out my sample:

String str_example = "";     
ThreadPoolExecutor poolExecutor = new ThreadPoolExecutor(10, 30, (long)10, TimeUnit.SECONDS, runnables);
    for (int i = 0; i < 80; i++){
        poolExecutor.submit(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                try {
                    Thread.sleep((long) (Math.random() * 1000));
                    String temp = str_example + "1";
                    str_example = temp;
                    System.out.println(str_example);

                } catch (Exception e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }

            }
        });
    }

so after executing this, i get something like that:

1
11
111
1111
11111
.......

So question is: i just expect the result like this if my String object has volatile modifier. But i have the same result with this modifier and without.


Solution

  • There are several reasons why you see "correct" execution.

    First, CPU designers do as much as they can so that our programs run correctly even in presence of data races. Cache coherence deals with cache lines and tries to minimize possible conflicts. For example, only one CPU can write to a cache line at some point of time. After write was done other CPUs should request that cache line to be able to write to it. Not to say x86 architecture(most probable which you use) is very strict comparing to others.

    Second, your program is slow and threads sleep for some random period of time. So they do almost all the work at different points of time.

    How to achieve inconsistent behavior? Try something with for loop without any sleep. In that case field value most probably will be cached in CPU registers and some updates will not be visible.

    P.S. Updates of field str_example are not atomic so you program may produce the same string values even in presense of volatile keyword.