Low Level Locks

Deep down in the JVM you'll find something like this in Atomic::cmpxchg:

  __asm__ volatile ("lock; 1: cmpxchgl %1,(%3)"
                    : "=a" (exchange_value)
                    : "r" (exchange_value), "a" (compare_value), "r" (dest)
                    : "cc", "memory");
  return exchange_value;

(Note: I've slightly modified this for reasons of clarity to ignore the case where the code might be running on a CPU that is not a multi-processor).

This code is hit often when the JVM tries to lock something. It is one of its many techniques to arbitrate contention (what happens in the event of contention I'll leave to another post).

So, what's it doing? It's basically doing what Java programmers would know from the AtomicXXX classes using low-level assembler. This is how GCC makes explicit assembler code. A good reference is here but briefly:

• asm (or alternatively __asm__) are keywords that allow the programmer to directly write assembler. Volatile means don't move our code as part of an optimization. It must execute where we placed it.
• The contents of the parentheses are delimited by colons and their meanings are ASSEMBLY_CODE:OUTPUT:INPUT:CLOBBERED.
• The CLOBBERED list tells the compiler what we have fiddled with (other than input and output) and that it should bear this mind before and after executing it. In this case, we're telling it we fiddled with the memory and the condition flags ("cc").
• The INPUT and OUTPUT fields map our C variables to particular CPU registers. In this case, we're saying use any registers for the values input via exchange_value and dest because "r" means "any register". For the input in compare_value and output in exchange_value we're saying explicitly use the EAX register ("a" and "=a" respectively. The equals sign means it is a write-only output.

Why the EAX register is used for input and output is given in Intel's Software Developer's Manual:

"The CMPXCHG instruction requires three operands: a source operand in a register, another source operand in the EAX register, and a destination operand. If the values contained in the destination operand and the EAX register are equal, the destination operand is replaced with the value of the other source operand (the value not in the EAX register). Otherwise, the original value of the destination operand is loaded in the EAX register." [1]

If you put this code in a simple .c file and compile it with:

$ gcc -S YOUR_FILE.c

you'll see the raw assembly output to YOUR_FILE.s confirms the above.

[1] Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual Combined Volumes: 1, 2A, 2B, 2C, 3A, 3B, and 3C