As far as I know reference assignment is atomic in a 64 bit JVM. Now, I assume the jvm doesn't use atomic pointers internally to model this, since otherwise there would be no need for Atomic References. So my questions are:
Is atomic reference assignment in the "specs" of java/Scala and guaranteed to happen or is it just a happy coincidence that it is that way most times ?
Is atomic reference assignment implied for any language that compiles to the JVM's bytecode (e.g. clojure, Groovy, JRuby, JPython...etc) ?
How can reference assignment be atomic without using an atomic pointer internally ?