CSC/ECE 506 Spring 2012/9a ms

Synchronization in Java

The support for multi-threading at language level is the strength of Java programming language. Hence most of Java programming language is centered around coordinating the sharing of data among the multiple threads.

Memory Model for Data

The JVM organizes the data of a running Java application into several runtime data areas: one or more Java stacks, a heap, and a method area.

Each thread has it own Java stack. The stack contains data that cannot be accessed by other threads (including the local variables, parameters, and return values of each method the thread has invoked). The data on the stack is limited to primitive types and object references. The JVM has only one heap which is shared by all threads. The heap contains objects. The Method Area is another place where data can reside. It contains all the class (or static) variables used by the program. The method area is similar to the stack in that it contains only primitive types and object references. Unlike the stack, however, the class variables in the method area are shared by all threads.

Sharing and Locks

The sharing of data in a multiprocessor differ from that of the uniprocessor. In a uni-processor system, multiple threads do not execute concurrently but they time share the processor for execution. Whereas on multiprocessor, multiple threads execute concurrently on different processors. Thus they have a tight contention for locks and strong sharing rules on multi processor system.

As mentioned above, the heap and the method area contain all the data that is shared by multiple threads. To coordinate shared data access among multiple threads, the Java virtual machine associates a lock with each object and class. A lock is like a privilege that only one thread can "possess" at any one time. If a thread wants to lock a particular object or class, it asks the JVM. At some point after the thread asks the JVM for a lock -- maybe very soon, maybe later, possibly never -- the JVM gives the lock to the thread. When the thread no longer needs the lock, it returns it to the JVM. If another thread has requested the same lock, the JVM passes the lock to that thread. Class locks are actually implemented as object locks. When the JVM loads a class file, it creates an instance of class java.lang.Class. When you lock a class, you are actually locking that class's Class object. Threads need not obtain a lock to access instance or class variables. If a thread does obtain a lock, however, no other thread can access the locked data until the thread that owns the lock releases it.

Monitors

The JVM uses locks in conjunction with monitors. A monitor is basically a guardian in that it watches over a sequence of code, making sure only one thread at a time executes the code. Each monitor is associated with an object reference. When a thread arrives at the first instruction in a block of code that is under the watchful eye of a monitor, the thread must obtain a lock on the referenced object. The thread is not allowed to execute the code until it obtains the lock. Once it has obtained the lock, the thread enters the block of protected code. When the thread leaves the block, no matter how it leaves the block, it releases the lock on the associated object.

Synchronization

A single thread is allowed to lock the same object multiple times. For each object, the JVM maintains a count of the number of times the object has been locked. An unlocked object has a count of zero. When a thread acquires the lock for the first time, the count is incremented to one. Each time the thread acquires a lock on the same object, a count is incremented. Each time the thread releases the lock, the count is decremented. When the count reaches zero, the lock is released and made available to other threads.

For a java developer, the keyword synchronized is provided to enforce critical execution on a statement or a method. On entering a synchronized block, a lock is acquired. The block is not executed till a lock is acquired. The opcodes monitorenter and monitorexit are used while entering and exiting the synchronized block. When the JVM encounters monitorenter, it acquires the lock for the object referred. If the thread already owns the lock for the object, the lock count is incremented. Similarly, when monitorexit is executed by the JVM, the count is decremented. The monitor lock is released when the count reaches zero.

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Sun's Java virtual machine specification states that synchronization is based on monitors. This point is reinforced at the Java VM level by the presence of monitorenter and monitorexit instructions.

First suggested by E. W. Dijkstra in 1971, conceptualized by P. Brinch Hansen in 1972-1973, and refined by C. A. R. Hoare in 1974, a monitor is a concurrency construct that encapsulates data and functionality for allocating and releasing shared resources (such as network connections, memory buffers, printers, and so on). To accomplish resource allocation or release, a thread calls a monitor entry (a special function or procedure that serves as an entry point into a monitor). If there is no other thread executing code within the monitor, the calling thread is allowed to enter the monitor and execute the monitor entry's code. But if a thread is already inside of the monitor, the monitor makes the calling thread wait outside of the monitor until the other thread leaves the monitor. The monitor then allows the waiting thread to enter. Because synchronization is guaranteed, problems such as data being lost or scrambled are avoided. To learn more about monitors, study Hoare's landmark paper, <ref http://john.cs.olemiss.edu/~dwilkins/Seminar/S05/Monitors.pdf> ""Monitors: An Operating System Structuring Concept," </ref> first published by the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery Inc. in 1974.

The Java virtual machine specification goes on to state that monitor behavior can be explained in terms of locks. Think of a lock as a token that a thread must acquire before a monitor allows that thread to execute inside of a monitor entry. That token is automatically released when the thread exits the monitor, to give another thread an opportunity to get the token and enter the monitor.

Java associates locks with objects: each object is assigned its own lock, and each lock is assigned to one object. A thread acquires an object's lock prior to entering the lock-controlled monitor entry, which Java represents at the source code level as either a <ref http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/concurrency/syncmeth.html> synchronized method </ref> or a <ref http://www.javamex.com/tutorials/synchronization_concurrency_synchronized1.shtml> synchronized statement </ref>.

Biased Lock Mechanism

In all the algorithms discussed above consists of atomic instructions like compare-and-swap operations.Considering that atomic operations are especially expensive(memory fence on modern hardware - ie need to flush memory queues) in modern architectures, they are becoming the major overhead factor in Java locks. The atomic operations are very effective in the situation where multiple threads acquire a lock symmetrically. But in general this is not the best solution when there is an asymmetry in the lock acquisitions.This case is very common in an important class of applications that includes such systems as Java Virtual Machines. If an object’s lock is frequently acquired by a specific thread,the lock’s cost may be further reduced by giving a certain precedence to that thread, while shifting costs to other threads. This optimized technique is known as quickly reacquirable mutual exclusion locks (QRLs) or Biased locking or Reservation Lock.

To make this optimized technique effective,there must exist a locality such that each object’s lock is frequently acquired by a specific thread, for which the lock is to be reserved.This locality is known as thread locality and it is defined in terms of the lock sequence, the sequence of threads (in temporal order) that acquire the lock. The key idea is to allow a lock to be reserved for a thread. The reservation-owner thread can perform the lock processing without atomic operations, so the lock overhead is minimized.If another thread attempts to acquire the reserved lock,the reservation must first be canceled, and the lock processing falls back to an existing algorithm.For a given lock, if its lock sequence contains a very long repetition of a specific thread, the lock is said to exhibit thread locality, while the specific thread is said to be the dominant locker.

The Reservation lock mechanism can be explained in detail as below,The key idea of this algorithm is to reserve locks for threads. When a thread attempts to acquire an object’s lock, one of the following actions is taken in accordance with the lock’s reservation status:

• If the object’s lock is reserved for the thread, the runtime system allows the thread to acquire the lock with a few instructions involving no atomic operations.
• If the object’s lock is reserved for another thread, the runtime system cancels the reservation, and falls back to a conventional algorithm for further processing.
• If the object’s lock is not reserved, or the reservation was already canceled, the runtime system uses a conventional algorithm.

References

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