What does AtomicReference.compareAndSet() use for determination?

Question

Say you have the following class

public class AccessStatistics {
  private final int noPages, noErrors;
  public AccessStatistics(int noPages, int noErrors) {
    this.noPages = noPages;
    this.noErrors = noErrors;
  }
  public int getNoPages() { return noPages; }
  public int getNoErrors() { return noErrors; }
}

and you execute the following code

private AtomicReference<AccessStatistics> stats =
  new AtomicReference<AccessStatistics>(new AccessStatistics(0, 0));

public void incrementPageCount(boolean wasError) {
  AccessStatistics prev, newValue;
  do {
    prev = stats.get();
    int noPages = prev.getNoPages() + 1;
    int noErrors = prev.getNoErrors;
    if (wasError) {
      noErrors++;
    }
    newValue = new AccessStatistics(noPages, noErrors);
  } while (!stats.compareAndSet(prev, newValue));
}

In the last line while (!stats.compareAndSet(prev, newValue)) how does the compareAndSet method determine equality between prev and newValue? Is the AccessStatistics class required to implement an equals() method? If not, why? The javadoc states the following for AtomicReference.compareAndSet

Atomically sets the value to the given updated value if the current value == the expected value.

... but this assertion seems very general and the tutorials i've read on AtomicReference never suggest implementing an equals() for a class wrapped in an AtomicReference.

If classes wrapped in AtomicReference are required to implement equals() then for objects more complex than AccessStatistics I'm thinking it may be faster to synchronize methods that update the object and not use AtomicReference.

Answer 1

It compares the refrerences exactly as if you had used the == operator. That means that the references must be pointing to the same instance. Object.equals() is not used.

Answer 2

Actually, it does not compare prev and newValue!

Instead it compares the value stored within stats to prev and only when those are the same, it updates the value stored within stats to newValue. As said above it uses the equals operator (==) to do so. This means that anly when prev is pointing to the same object as is stored in stats will stats be updated.

Answer 3

It simply checks the object reference equality (aka ==), so if object reference held by AtomicReference had changed after you got the reference, it won't change the reference, so you'll have to start over.

Answer 4

Following are some of the source code of AtomicReference. AtomicReference refers to an object reference. This reference is a volatile member variable in the AtomicReference instance as below.

private volatile V value;

get() simply returns the latest value of the variable (as volatiles do in a "happens before" manner).

public final V get()

Following is the most important method of AtomicReference.

public final boolean  compareAndSet(V expect, V update) {
        return unsafe.compareAndSwapObject(this, valueOffset, expect, update);
}

The compareAndSet(expect,update) method calls the compareAndSwapObject() method of the unsafe class of Java. This method call of unsafe invokes the native call, which invokes a single instruction to the processor. "expect" and "update" each reference an object.

If and only if the AtomicReference instance member variable "value" refers to the same object is referred to by "expect", "update" is assigned to this instance variable now, and "true" is returned. Or else, false is returned. The whole thing is done atomically. No other thread can intercept in between. As this is a single processor operation (magic of modern computer architecture), it's often faster than using a synchronized block. But remember that when multiple variables need to be updated atomically, AtomicReference won't help.

I would like to add a full fledged running code, which can be run in eclipse. It would clear many confusion. Here 22 users (MyTh threads) are trying to book 20 seats. Following is the code snippet followed by the full code.

Code snippet where 22 users are trying to book 20 seats.

for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++) {// 20 seats
            seats.add(new AtomicReference<Integer>());
        }
        Thread[] ths = new Thread[22];// 22 users
        for (int i = 0; i < ths.length; i++) {
            ths[i] = new MyTh(seats, i);
            ths[i].start();
        }

Following is the github link for those who wants to see the running full code which is small and concise. https://github.com/sankar4git/atomicReference/blob/master/Solution.java