Why is volatile not considered useful in multithreaded C or C++ programming?

Question

The problem with volatile in a multithreaded context is that it doesn't provide all the guarantees we need. It does have a few properties we need, but not all of them, so we can't rely on volatile alone.

However, the primitives we'd have to use for the remaining properties also provide the ones that volatile does, so it is effectively unnecessary.

For thread-safe accesses to shared data, we need a guarantee that:

• the read/write actually happens (that the compiler won't just store the value in a register instead and defer updating main memory until much later)
• that no reordering takes place. Assume that we use a volatile variable as a flag to indicate whether or not some data is ready to be read. In our code, we simply set the flag after preparing the data, so all looks fine. But what if the instructions are reordered so the flag is set first?

volatile does guarantee the first point. It also guarantees that no reordering occurs between different volatile reads/writes. All volatile memory accesses will occur in the order in which they're specified. That is all we need for what volatile is intended for: manipulating I/O registers or memory-mapped hardware, but it doesn't help us in multithreaded code where the volatile object is often only used to synchronize access to non-volatile data. Those accesses can still be reordered relative to the volatile ones.

The solution to preventing reordering is to use a memory barrier, which indicates both to the compiler and the CPU that no memory access may be reordered across this point. Placing such barriers around our volatile variable access ensures that even non-volatile accesses won't be reordered across the volatile one, allowing us to write thread-safe code.

However, memory barriers also ensure that all pending reads/writes are executed when the barrier is reached, so it effectively gives us everything we need by itself, making volatile unnecessary. We can just remove the volatile qualifier entirely.

Since C++11, atomic variables (std::atomic<T>) give us all of the relevant guarantees.

You might also consider this from the Linux Kernel Documentation.

C programmers have often taken volatile to mean that the variable could be changed outside of the current thread of execution; as a result, they are sometimes tempted to use it in kernel code when shared data structures are being used. In other words, they have been known to treat volatile types as a sort of easy atomic variable, which they are not. The use of volatile in kernel code is almost never correct; this document describes why.

The key point to understand with regard to volatile is that its purpose is to suppress optimization, which is almost never what one really wants to do. In the kernel, one must protect shared data structures against unwanted concurrent access, which is very much a different task. The process of protecting against unwanted concurrency will also avoid almost all optimization-related problems in a more efficient way.

Like volatile, the kernel primitives which make concurrent access to data safe (spinlocks, mutexes, memory barriers, etc.) are designed to prevent unwanted optimization. If they are being used properly, there will be no need to use volatile as well. If volatile is still necessary, there is almost certainly a bug in the code somewhere. In properly-written kernel code, volatile can only serve to slow things down.

Consider a typical block of kernel code:

spin_lock(&the_lock);
do_something_on(&shared_data);
do_something_else_with(&shared_data);
spin_unlock(&the_lock);

If all the code follows the locking rules, the value of shared_data cannot change unexpectedly while the_lock is held. Any other code which might want to play with that data will be waiting on the lock. The spinlock primitives act as memory barriers - they are explicitly written to do so - meaning that data accesses will not be optimized across them. So the compiler might think it knows what will be in shared_data, but the spin_lock() call, since it acts as a memory barrier, will force it to forget anything it knows. There will be no optimization problems with accesses to that data.

If shared_data were declared volatile, the locking would still be necessary. But the compiler would also be prevented from optimizing access to shared_data within the critical section, when we know that nobody else can be working with it. While the lock is held, shared_data is not volatile. When dealing with shared data, proper locking makes volatile unnecessary - and potentially harmful.

The volatile storage class was originally meant for memory-mapped I/O registers. Within the kernel, register accesses, too, should be protected by locks, but one also does not want the compiler "optimizing" register accesses within a critical section. But, within the kernel, I/O memory accesses are always done through accessor functions; accessing I/O memory directly through pointers is frowned upon and does not work on all architectures. Those accessors are written to prevent unwanted optimization, so, once again, volatile is unnecessary.

Another situation where one might be tempted to use volatile is when the processor is busy-waiting on the value of a variable. The right way to perform a busy wait is:

while (my_variable != what_i_want)
    cpu_relax();

The cpu_relax() call can lower CPU power consumption or yield to a hyperthreaded twin processor; it also happens to serve as a memory barrier, so, once again, volatile is unnecessary. Of course, busy-waiting is generally an anti-social act to begin with.

There are still a few rare situations where volatile makes sense in the kernel:

• The above-mentioned accessor functions might use volatile on architectures where direct I/O memory access does work. Essentially, each accessor call becomes a little critical section on its own and ensures that the access happens as expected by the programmer.

• Inline assembly code which changes memory, but which has no other visible side effects, risks being deleted by GCC. Adding the volatile keyword to asm statements will prevent this removal.

• The jiffies variable is special in that it can have a different value every time it is referenced, but it can be read without any special locking. So jiffies can be volatile, but the addition of other variables of this type is strongly frowned upon. Jiffies is considered to be a "stupid legacy" issue (Linus's words) in this regard; fixing it would be more trouble than it is worth.

• Pointers to data structures in coherent memory which might be modified by I/O devices can, sometimes, legitimately be volatile. A ring buffer used by a network adapter, where that adapter changes pointers to indicate which descriptors have been processed, is an example of this type of situation.

For most code, none of the above justifications for volatile apply. As a result, the use of volatile is likely to be seen as a bug and will bring additional scrutiny to the code. Developers who are tempted to use volatile should take a step back and think about what they are truly trying to accomplish.

I don't think you're wrong -- volatile is necessary to guarantee that thread A will see the value change, if the value is changed by something other than thread A. As I understand it, volatile is basically a way to tell the compiler "don't cache this variable in a register, instead be sure to always read/write it from RAM memory on every access".

The confusion is because volatile isn't sufficient for implementing a number of things. In particular, modern systems use multiple levels of caching, modern multi-core CPUs do some fancy optimizations at run-time, and modern compilers do some fancy optimizations at compile time, and these all can result in various side effects showing up in a different order from the order you would expect if you just looked at the source code.

So volatile is fine, as long as you keep in mind that the 'observed' changes in the volatile variable may not occur at the exact time you think they will. Specifically, don't try to use volatile variables as a way to synchronize or order operations across threads, because it won't work reliably.

Personally, my main (only?) use for the volatile flag is as a "pleaseGoAwayNow" boolean. If I have a worker thread that loops continuously, I'll have it check the volatile boolean on each iteration of the loop, and exit if the boolean is ever true. The main thread can then safely clean up the worker thread by setting the boolean to true, and then calling pthread_join() to wait until the worker thread is gone.

volatile is useful (albeit insufficient) for implementing the basic construct of a spinlock mutex, but once you have that (or something superior), you don't need another volatile.

The typical way of multithreaded programming is not to protect every shared variable at the machine level, but rather to introduce guard variables which guide program flow. Instead of volatile bool my_shared_flag; you should have

pthread_mutex_t flag_guard_mutex; // contains something volatile
bool my_shared_flag;

Not only does this encapsulate the "hard part," it's fundamentally necessary: C does not include atomic operations necessary to implement a mutex; it only has volatile to make extra guarantees about ordinary operations.

Now you have something like this:

pthread_mutex_lock( &flag_guard_mutex );
my_local_state = my_shared_flag; // critical section
pthread_mutex_unlock( &flag_guard_mutex );

pthread_mutex_lock( &flag_guard_mutex ); // may alter my_shared_flag
my_shared_flag = ! my_shared_flag; // critical section
pthread_mutex_unlock( &flag_guard_mutex );

my_shared_flag does not need to be volatile, despite being uncacheable, because

1. Another thread has access to it.
2. Meaning a reference to it must have been taken sometime (with the & operator).
   • (Or a reference was taken to a containing structure)
3. pthread_mutex_lock is a library function.
4. Meaning the compiler can't tell if pthread_mutex_lock somehow acquires that reference.
5. Meaning the compiler must assume that pthread_mutex_lock modifes the shared flag!
6. So the variable must be reloaded from memory. volatile, while meaningful in this context, is extraneous.

Your understanding really is wrong.

The property, that the volatile variables have, is "reads from and writes to this variable are part of perceivable behaviour of the program". That means this program works (given appropriate hardware):

int volatile* reg=IO_MAPPED_REGISTER_ADDRESS;
*reg=1; // turn the fuel on
*reg=2; // ignition
*reg=3; // release
int x=*reg; // fire missiles

The problem is, this is not the property we want from thread-safe anything.

For example, a thread-safe counter would be just (linux-kernel-like code, don't know the c++0x equivalent):

atomic_t counter;

...
atomic_inc(&counter);

This is atomic, without a memory barrier. You should add them if necessary. Adding volatile would probably not help, because it wouldn't relate the access to the nearby code (eg. to appending of an element to the list the counter is counting). Certainly, you don't need to see the counter incremented outside your program, and optimisations are still desirable, eg.

atomic_inc(&counter);
atomic_inc(&counter);

can still be optimised to

atomically {
  counter+=2;
}

if the optimizer is smart enough (it doesn't change the semantics of the code).

For your data to be consistent in a concurrent environment you need two conditions to apply:

1) Atomicity i.e if I read or write some data to memory then that data gets read/written in one pass and cannot be interrupted or contended due to e.g a context switch

2) Consistency i.e the order of read/write ops must be seen to be the same between multiple concurrent environments - be that threads, machines etc

volatile fits neither of the above - or more particularly, the c or c++ standard as to how volatile should behave includes neither of the above.

It's even worse in practice as some compilers ( such as the intel Itanium compiler ) do attempt to implement some element of concurrent access safe behaviour ( i.e by ensuring memory fences ) however there is no consistency across compiler implementations and moreover the standard does not require this of the implementation in the first place.

Marking a variable as volatile will just mean that you are forcing the value to be flushed to and from memory each time which in many cases just slows down your code as you've basically blown your cache performance.

c# and java AFAIK do redress this by making volatile adhere to 1) and 2) however the same cannot be said for c/c++ compilers so basically do with it as you see fit.

For some more in depth ( though not unbiased ) discussion on the subject read this