The java.util.concurrent.atomic package offers classes such as AtomicInteger, AtomicLong, AtomicBoolean and AtomicReference that perform single-variable updates atomically without explicit locking. They rely on hardware compare-and-swap (CAS) instructions: an update succeeds only if the value has not changed since it was read, and retries otherwise. They also have volatile-like visibility, so every thread sees the latest value.
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