Why are two AtomicIntegers never equal?

Question

I stumbled across the source of AtomicInteger and realized that

new AtomicInteger(0).equals(new AtomicInteger(0))

evaluates to

Answer 1

I suspect that comparing the values is a no-go since there's no way to do it atomically in a portable fashion (without locks, that is).

And if there's no atomicity then the variables could compare equal even they never contained the same value at the same time (e.g. if a changed from 0 to 1 at exactly the same time as b changed from 1 to 0).