Summary: If and when the reference handler thread is able to use the discovered field to link reference objects in its pending list, so will GC. In that case, GC will scan through this field once a reference object has been placed on the pending list, but not scan that field before that stage, as the field is used by the concurrent GC thread to link discovered objects. When ReferenceHandleR thread does not use the discovered field for the purpose of linking the elements in the pending list, as would be the case in older JDKs, the JVM will fall back to the old behaviour of using the next field for that purpose.
Reviewed-by: jcoomes, mchung, stefank