There is a race between one thread successfully forwarding and copying the klass mirror for the SoftReference class (including the static master clock) and another thread attempting to use the master clock while attempting to discover a soft reference object. Maintain a shadow copy of the soft reference master clock and use the shadow during reference discovery and reference processing.
Reviewed-by: tonyp, brutisso, ysr
For current soft-ref clearing policies, we can decide at marking time if a soft-reference will definitely not be cleared, postponing the decision of whether it will definitely be cleared to the final reference processing phase. This can be especially beneficial in the case of concurrent collectors where the marking is usually concurrent but reference processing is usually not.
Reviewed-by: jmasa
