What is JSR 133 about?
Since 1997, several serious flaws have been discovered in the Java Memory Model as defined in Chapter 17 of the Java Language Specification. These flaws allowed for confusing behaviors (such as final fields being observed to change their value) and undermined the compiler’s ability to perform common optimizations. The Java Memory Model was an ambitious undertaking; it was the first time that a programming language specification attempted to incorporate a memory model which could provide consistent semantics for concurrency across a variety of architectures. Unfortunately, defining a memory model which is both consistent and intuitive proved far more difficult than expected. JSR 133 defines a new memory model for the Java language which fixes the flaws of the earlier memory model. In order to do this, the semantics of final and volatile needed to change. The full semantics are available at http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/pugh/java/memoryModel, but the formal semantics are not for the timid.
