java - Atomic access to field within object

Question

If I need atomic access to an int field inside an object, is it sufficient to declare the field as an AtomicInteger or do I need to use an AtomicIntegerFieldUpdater? (and why?)

Answer 1

Using an AtomicInteger is sufficient. Atomic updaters are for use with volatile fields; the primary use case is data structures which have large numbers of fields that require atomic access; you use the field updater to use those fields with atomic semantics without having an AtomicInteger reference for each field.

For a detailed discussion, see this link.