RFR: 8351997: AArch64: Interpreter volatile reference stores with G1 are not sequentially consistent

Fredrik Bredberg fbredberg at openjdk.org
Wed May 28 16:53:55 UTC 2025


On Wed, 28 May 2025 08:49:17 GMT, Erik Österlund <eosterlund at openjdk.org> wrote:

> The optimized fast_aputfield bytecode on AArch64 stores the field flags in r3, and performs the leading and trailing fencing depending on its volatile bit being set or not. However, r3 is also the last temp register passed in to the barrier set for reference stores, and G1 clobbers it in a way that may clear the volatile bit. Then the trailing fence won't get executed, and sequential consistency is broken.
> 
> My fix puts the flags in r5 instead, which is the register that was used by normal aputfield bytecodes. This way, barriers don't clobber the volatile bits.
> 
> This bug has been observed to mess up a classic Dekker duality in the java.util.concurrent.Exchanger class, leading to a hang in the test/jdk/java/util/concurrent/Exchanger/ExchangeLoops.java test that exercises it. Using G1 and -Xint a reproducer hangs 30/100 times in mach5. With the fix, the same reproducer hangs 0/100 times.

I think the problem is well understood by now, and I'm sure this will generate at least one follow-up patch. But for now, I'm happy with this PR as is. Great work!

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Marked as reviewed by fbredberg (Committer).

PR Review: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/25483#pullrequestreview-2875793399


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