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I am wondering at the difference between declaring a variable as volatile and always accessing the variable in a synchronized(this) block in Java? According to this article http://www.javamex.com/tutorials/synchronization_volatile.shtml there is a lot to be said and there are many differences but also some similarities. I am particularly interested in this piece of info: ... access to a volatile variable never has the potential to block: we're only ever doing a simple read or write, so unlike a synchronized block we will never hold on to any lock; because accessing a volatile variable never holds a lock, it is not suitable for cases where we want to read-update-write as an atomic operation (unless we're prepared to "miss an update"); What do they mean by read-update-write ? Isn't a write also an update or do they simply mean that the update is a write that depends on the read? Most of all, when is it more suitable to declare variables volatile rather than access them through a synchronized block? Is it a good idea to use volatile for variables that depend on input? For instance, there is a variable called render that is read through the rendering loop and set by a keypress event?

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