Can you explain what is meant by atomic data types?

Atomic data types are data types whose operations are performed as indivisible (atomic) actions. This means that such operations either complete entirely or not at all, without intermediate states, which is important for correct operation in a multithreaded environment.

In Java, for example, the AtomicInteger class provides atomic operations on integer values, allowing safe modification of the value from different threads without using synchronization:

import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger;

AtomicInteger counter = new AtomicInteger(0);
counter.incrementAndGet(); // atomic increment by 1