In GENERAL each THREAD has its own copy of VARIABLE, such that one thread is not concerned with the VALUE of same variable in the other thread. But sometime this may not be the case. Consider a scenario in which the count variable is holding the number of times a METHOD is called for a given class irrespective of any thread calling, in this case irrespective of thread access the count has to be increased so the count variable is declared as volatile.
The copy of volatile variable is stored in the main memory, so every time a thread access the variable even for reading purpose the local copy is updated each time from the main memory. The volatile variable also have performance issues.

In general each thread has its own copy of variable, such that one thread is not concerned with the value of same variable in the other thread. But sometime this may not be the case. Consider a scenario in which the count variable is holding the number of times a method is called for a given class irrespective of any thread calling, in this case irrespective of thread access the count has to be increased so the count variable is declared as volatile.
The copy of volatile variable is stored in the main memory, so every time a thread access the variable even for reading purpose the local copy is updated each time from the main memory. The volatile variable also have performance issues.