Elimination of traps and atomics in thread synchronization is provided. In one embodiment, a processor includes a lock cache. The lock cache holds a value that corresponds to or identifies a computer resource only if a current thread executing on the processor owns the computer resource. A lock cache operation (e.g., a lockcachecheck instruction) determines whether a value identifying a computer resource is cached in the lock cache and returns a first predetermined value if the value identifying the computer resource is cached in the lock cache. Otherwise, a second predetermined value is returned.