Article

The Java memory model

Authors:

Sarita V. AdveAuthors Info & Claims

POPL '05: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

Pages 378 - 391

https://doi.org/10.1145/1040305.1040336

Published: 12 January 2005 Publication History

Abstract

This paper describes the new Java memory model, which has been revised as part of Java 5.0. The model specifies the legal behaviors for a multithreaded program; it defines the semantics of multithreaded Java programs and partially determines legal implementations of Java virtual machines and compilers.The new Java model provides a simple interface for correctly synchronized programs -- it guarantees sequential consistency to data-race-free programs. Its novel contribution is requiring that the behavior of incorrectly synchronized programs be bounded by a well defined notion of causality. The causality requirement is strong enough to respect the safety and security properties of Java and weak enough to allow standard compiler and hardware optimizations. To our knowledge, other models are either too weak because they do not provide for sufficient safety/security, or are too strong because they rely on a strong notion of data and control dependences that precludes some standard compiler transformations.Although the majority of what is currently done in compilers is legal, the new model introduces significant differences, and clearly defines the boundaries of legal transformations. For example, the commonly accepted definition for control dependence is incorrect for Java, and transformations based on it may be invalid.In addition to providing the official memory model for Java, we believe the model described here could prove to be a useful basis for other programming languages that currently lack well-defined models, such as C++ and C#.

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The Java memory model

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cover image ACM Conferences

POPL '05: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

January 2005

402 pages

ISBN:158113830X

DOI:10.1145/1040305

General Chair:
Jens Palsberg
University of California, Los Angeles, CA
,
Program Chair:
Martín Abadi
University of California, Santa Cruz, CA

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 40, Issue 1
Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages
January 2005
391 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1047659
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Copyright © 2005 ACM.

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Published: 12 January 2005

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