RFR (L, but tedious) 8188220: Remove Atomic::*_ptr() uses and overloads from hotspot

[Kim Barrett]

> On Oct 10, 2017, at 6:01 PM, coleen.phillimore at oracle.com wrote:
> 
> Summary: With the new template functions these are unnecessary.
> 
> 2. renamed Atomic::replace_if_null to Atomic::cmpxchg_if_null.  I disliked the first name because it's not explicit from the callers that there's an underlying cas.  If people want to fight, I'll remove the function and use cmpxchg because there are only a couple places where this is a little nicer.

I'm still looking at other parts, but I want to respond to this now.

I object to this change.  I think the proposed new name is confusing,
suggesting there are two different comparisons involved.

I originally called it something else that I wasn't entirely happy
with.  When David suggested replace_if_null I quickly adopted that as
I think that name exactly describes what it does.  In particular, I
think "atomic replace if" pretty clearly suggests a test-and-set /
compare-and-swap type of operation.

Further, I think any name involving "cmpxchg" is problematic because
the result of this operation is intentionally different from cmpxchg,
in order to better support the primary use-case, which is lazy
initialization.

I also object to your alternative suggestion of removing the operation
entirely and just using cmpxchg directly instead.  I don't recall how
many occurrences there presently are, but I suspect more could easily
be added; it's part of a lazy initialization pattern similar to DCLP
but without the locks.