Double-checked locking is a software design pattern used to reduce the overhead of acquiring a lock by first testing the locking criterion without actually acquiring the lock.
From Wikipedia:
In software engineering, double-checked locking (also known as "double-checked locking optimization"1) is a software design pattern used to reduce the overhead of acquiring a lock by first testing the locking criterion (the "lock hint") without actually acquiring the lock. Only if the locking criterion check indicates that locking is required does the actual locking logic proceed.
The pattern, when implemented in some language/hardware combinations, can be unsafe. At times, it can be considered an anti-pattern.[2]
It is typically used to reduce locking overhead when implementing "lazy initialization" in a multi-threaded environment, especially as part of the Singleton pattern. Lazy initialization avoids initializing a value until the first time it is accessed.
