[java] Practical uses for AtomicInteger

There are two main uses of AtomicInteger:

  • As an atomic counter (incrementAndGet(), etc) that can be used by many threads concurrently

  • As a primitive that supports compare-and-swap instruction (compareAndSet()) to implement non-blocking algorithms.

    Here is an example of non-blocking random number generator from Brian Göetz's Java Concurrency In Practice:

    public class AtomicPseudoRandom extends PseudoRandom {
        private AtomicInteger seed;
        AtomicPseudoRandom(int seed) {
            this.seed = new AtomicInteger(seed);
        }
    
        public int nextInt(int n) {
            while (true) {
                int s = seed.get();
                int nextSeed = calculateNext(s);
                if (seed.compareAndSet(s, nextSeed)) {
                    int remainder = s % n;
                    return remainder > 0 ? remainder : remainder + n;
                }
            }
        }
        ...
    }
    

    As you can see, it basically works almost the same way as incrementAndGet(), but performs arbitrary calculation (calculateNext()) instead of increment (and processes the result before return).