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The Java™ Tutorials
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Concurrency
Processes and Threads
Thread Objects
Defining and Starting a Thread
Pausing Execution with Sleep
Interrupts
Joins
The SimpleThreads Example
Synchronization
Thread Interference
Memory Consistency Errors
Synchronized Methods
Intrinsic Locks and Synchronization
Atomic Access
Liveness
Deadlock
Starvation and Livelock
Guarded Blocks
Immutable Objects
A Synchronized Class Example
A Strategy for Defining Immutable Objects
High Level Concurrency Objects
Lock Objects
Executors
Executor Interfaces
Thread Pools
Fork/Join
Concurrent Collections
Atomic Variables
Concurrent Random Numbers
For Further Reading
Questions and Exercises
Trail: Essential Classes
Lesson: Concurrency
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# High Level Concurrency Objects

So far, this lesson has focused on the low-level APIs that have been part of the Java platform from the very beginning. These APIs are adequate for very basic tasks, but higher-level building blocks are needed for more advanced tasks. This is especially true for massively concurrent applications that fully exploit today's multiprocessor and multi-core systems.

In this section we'll look at some of the high-level concurrency features introduced with version 5.0 of the Java platform. Most of these features are implemented in the new `java.util.concurrent` packages. There are also new concurrent data structures in the Java Collections Framework.

- Lock objects support locking idioms that simplify many concurrent applications.
- Executors define a high-level API for launching and managing threads. Executor implementations provided by `java.util.concurrent` provide thread pool management suitable for large-scale applications.
- Concurrent collections make it easier to manage large collections of data, and can greatly reduce the need for synchronization.
- Atomic variables have features that minimize synchronization and help avoid memory consistency errors.
- `ThreadLocalRandom` (in JDK 7) provides efficient generation of pseudorandom numbers from multiple threads.

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