The "Double-Checked Locking is Broken" Declaration

http://www.cs.umd.edu/~pugh/java/memoryModel/DoubleCheckedLocking.html


To first explain the desired behavior, consider the following code:

// Single threaded version
class Foo { 
  private Helper helper = null;
  public Helper getHelper() {
    if (helper == null) 
        helper = new Helper();
    return helper;
    }
  // other functions and members...
  }

If this code was used in a multithreaded context, many things could go wrong. Most obviously, two or more Helper objects could be allocated. (We'll bring up other problems later). The fix to this is simply to synchronize the getHelper() method:

// Correct multithreaded version
class Foo { 
  private Helper helper = null;
  public synchronized Helper getHelper() {
    if (helper == null) 
        helper = new Helper();
    return helper;
    }
  // other functions and members...
  }

The code above performs synchronization every time getHelper() is called. The double-checked locking idiom tries to avoid synchronization after the helper is allocated:

// Broken multithreaded version
// "Double-Checked Locking" idiom
class Foo { 
  private Helper helper = null;
  public Helper getHelper() {
    if (helper == null) 
      synchronized(this) {
        if (helper == null) 
          helper = new Helper();
      }    
    return helper;
    }
  // other functions and members...
  }

It doesn't work

There are lots of reasons it doesn't work. The first couple of reasons we'll describe are more obvious. After understanding those, you may be tempted to try to devise a way to "fix" the double-checked locking idiom. Your fixes will not work: there are more subtle reasons why your fix won't work. Understand those reasons, come up with a better fix, and it still won't work, because there are even more subtle reasons.

Lots of very smart people have spent lots of time looking at this. There is no way to make it work without requiring each thread that accesses the helper object to perform synchronization.

The first reason it doesn't work

The most obvious reason it doesn't work it that the writes that initialize the Helper object and the write to the helper field can be done or perceived out of order. Thus, a thread which invokes getHelper() could see a non-null reference to a helper object, but see the default values for fields of the helper object, rather than the values set in the constructor.

If the compiler inlines the call to the constructor, then the writes that initialize the object and the write to the helper field can be freely reordered if the compiler can prove that the constructor cannot throw an exception or perform synchronization.

Even if the compiler does not reorder those writes, on a multiprocessor the processor or the memory system may reorder those writes, as perceived by a thread running on another processor.

Doug Lea has written a more detailed description of compiler-based reorderings.
http://gee.cs.oswego.edu/dl/cpj/jmm.html

A fix that doesn't work

Given the explanation above, a number of people have suggested the following code:

// (Still) Broken multithreaded version
// "Double-Checked Locking" idiom
class Foo { 
  private Helper helper = null;
  public Helper getHelper() {
    if (helper == null) {
      Helper h;
      synchronized(this) {
        h = helper;
        if (h == null) 
            synchronized (this) {
              h = new Helper();
            } // release inner synchronization lock
        helper = h;
        } 
      }    
    return helper;
    }
  // other functions and members...
  }

Fixing Double-Checked Locking using Thread Local Storage

Alexander Terekhov ([e-mail]) came up clever suggestion for implementing double checked locking using thread local storage. Each thread keeps a thread local flag to determine whether that thread has done the required synchronization.

 class Foo {
	 /** If perThreadInstance.get() returns a non-null value, this thread
		has done synchronization needed to see initialization
		of helper */
         private final ThreadLocal perThreadInstance = new ThreadLocal();
         private Helper helper = null;
         public Helper getHelper() {
             if (perThreadInstance.get() == null) createHelper();
             return helper;
         }
         private final void createHelper() {
             synchronized(this) {
                 if (helper == null)
                     helper = new Helper();
             }
	     // Any non-null value would do as the argument here
             perThreadInstance.set(perThreadInstance);
         }
	}

Fixing Double-Checked Locking using Volatile

JDK5 and later extends the semantics for volatile so that the system will not allow a write of a volatile to be reordered with respect to any previous read or write, and a read of a volatile cannot be reordered with respect to any following read or write. See this entry in Jeremy Manson's blog for more details.

// Works with acquire/release semantics for volatile
// Broken under current semantics for volatile
  class Foo {
        private volatile Helper helper = null;
        public Helper getHelper() {
            if (helper == null) {
                synchronized(this) {
                    if (helper == null)
                        helper = new Helper();
                }
            }
            return helper;
        }
    }

// Works with acquire/release semantics for volatile
// Broken under Java 1.4 and earlier semantics for volatile
class Foo {
    private volatile Helper helper = null;
    public Helper getHelper() {
        Helper result = helper;
        if (result == null) {
            synchronized(this) {
                result = helper;
                if (result == null) {
                    helper = result = new Helper();
                }
            }
        }
        return result;
    }

    // other functions and members...
}
Note the usage of the local variable result which seems unnecessary. For some versions of the Java VM, it will make the code 25% faster and for others,


If the helper object is static (one per class loader), an alternative is the initialization on demand holder idiom

// Correct lazy initialization in Java
@ThreadSafe
class Foo {
    private static class HelperHolder {
       public static Helper helper = new Helper();
    }

    public static Helper getHelper() {
        return HelperHolder.helper;
    }
}


This relies on the fact that inner classes are not loaded until they are referenced.
Semantics of final field in Java 5 can be employed to safely publish the helper object without using volatile:[7]

public class FinalWrapper<T> {
    public final T value;
    public FinalWrapper(T value) { 
        this.value = value; 
    }
}
 
public class Foo {
   private FinalWrapper<Helper> helperWrapper = null;
 
   public Helper getHelper() {
      FinalWrapper<Helper> wrapper = helperWrapper;
 
      if (wrapper == null) {
          synchronized(this) {
              if (helperWrapper == null) {
                  helperWrapper = new FinalWrapper<Helper>(new Helper());
              }
              wrapper = helperWrapper;
          }
      }
      return wrapper.value;
   }
}