An example of a non-atomic operation is updating the field using the increment operator.
As the operation involves read and write, and other modifications may happen in between, data may become corrupted.
The operation can be made atomic by surrounding it with a synchronized
block or
using one of the classes from the java.util.concurrent.atomic
package.
Example:
private volatile int v = 1; void foo() { v = 2 * v; }