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How can I schedule some work in n threads separately

Lets say I have n threads concurrently taking values from a shared queue:
public class WorkerThread implements Runnable{
private BlockingQueue queue;
private ArrayList<Integer> counts = new ArrayList<>();
private int count=0;
public void run(){
while(true) {
queue.pop();
count++;
}
}
}
Then for each thread, I want to count every 5 seconds how many items it has dequeued, and then store it in its own list (counts)
I've seen here Print "hello world" every X seconds how you can run some code every x seconds:
Timer t = new Timer();
t.scheduleAtFixedRate(new TimerTask(){
#Override
public void run(){
counts.add(count);
count = 0
}
}, 0, 5000);
The problem with this is that I can't access count variable and the list of counts unless they are static. But I don't want them to be static because I don't want the different threads to share those variables.
Any ideas of how to handle this?

I don't think it's possible to use scheduled execution for you case(neither Timer nor ScheduledExecutorService), because each new scheduled invocation will create a new tasks with while loop. So number of tasks will increase constantly.
If you don't need to access this list of counts in runtime i would suggest something like this one:
static class Task implements Runnable {
private final ThreadLocal<List<Integer>> counts = ThreadLocal.withInitial(ArrayList::new);
private volatile List<Integer> result = new ArrayList<>();
private BlockingQueue<Object> queue;
public Task(BlockingQueue<Object> queue) {
this.queue = queue;
}
#Override
public void run() {
int count = 0;
long start = System.nanoTime();
try {
while (!Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
queue.take();
count++;
long end = System.nanoTime();
if ((end - start) >= TimeUnit.SECONDS.toNanos(1)) {
counts.get().add(count);
count = 0;
start = end;
}
}
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
}
// the last value
counts.get().add(count);
// copy the result cause it's not possible
// to access thread local variable outside of this thread
result = counts.get();
}
public List<Integer> getCounts() {
return result;
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
ExecutorService executorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(3);
BlockingQueue<Object> blockingQueue = new LinkedBlockingQueue<>();
Task t1 = new Task(blockingQueue);
Task t2 = new Task(blockingQueue);
Task t3 = new Task(blockingQueue);
executorService.submit(t1);
executorService.submit(t2);
executorService.submit(t3);
for (int i = 0; i < 50; i++) {
blockingQueue.add(new Object());
Thread.sleep(100);
}
// unlike shutdown() interrupts running threads
executorService.shutdownNow();
executorService.awaitTermination(1, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
System.out.println("t1 " + t1.getCounts());
System.out.println("t2 " + t2.getCounts());
System.out.println("t3 " + t3.getCounts());
int total = Stream.concat(Stream.concat(t1.getCounts().stream(), t2.getCounts().stream()), t3.getCounts().stream())
.reduce(0, (a, b) -> a + b);
// 50 as expected
System.out.println(total);
}

Why not a static AtomicLong?
Or the WorkerThread(s) can publish that they poped to the TimerTask or somewhere else? And the TimerTask reads that info?

java static variables and cache

I have two threads and they are both reading the same static variable (some big object - an array with 500_000_000 ints).
The two threads are pinned to a cpu (1 and 2) (cpu affinity) so minimize jitters.
Do you know if the two threads will slow down each other because of the static variable is read by both threads running on different cpu?
import net.openhft.affinity.AffinityLock;
public class BigObject {
public final int[] array = new int[500_000_000];
public static final BigObject bo_static = new BigObject();
public BigObject() {
for( int i = 0; i<array.length; i++){
array[i]=i;
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
final Boolean useStatic = true;
Integer n = 2;
for( int i = 0; i<n; i++){
final int k = i;
Runnable r = new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
BigObject b;
if( useStatic){
b = BigObject.bo_static;
}
else{
b = new BigObject();
}
try (AffinityLock al = AffinityLock.acquireLock()) {
while(true){
long nt1 = System.nanoTime();
double sum = 0;
for( int i : b.array){
sum+=i;
}
long nt2 = System.nanoTime();
double dt = (nt2-nt1)*1e-6;
System.out.println(k + ": sum " + sum + " " + dt);
}
}
}
};
new Thread(r).start();
}
}
}
Thanks

In your case there won't be a slow down from doing it multi-threaded - since you're doing only reads no need to invalidate any shared state between your CPUs.
Depending on the back-ground load there could be bus limitations and stuff, but if the affinity is defined at the OS level as well - there would be more inter-CPU and inter-core communications at an easily pre-fetched manner (since you access the data sequentially) than memory-cpu communications. Back-ground load would affect the performance in single-threaded case as well - so there's no need to argue about it.
If the whole system is dedicated to your program - than you would have approximately ~20Gb/s memory bandwidth on modern CPUs which is more than enough for your data-set.

Why the concurrent threads limit doesn't works as expected?

Though there are similar issues, I couldn't found any similar examples like the one I got. I really appreciate any help understanding where I got wrong with my implementation.
What I'm trying to do:
I have a Main class Driver, which can instantiates unknown number of threads. Each thread call a singleton class which should simulate a 'fake' file transfer action.
The issue I have is that I need to limit the concurrent transfers to 2 transfers, regardless the number of concurrent requests.
The way I tried to solve my problem is by adding each new Thread in a ConcurrentLinkedQueue and managing it by using Executors.newFixedThreadPool(POOL_SIZE) to limit the concurrent threads to be 2. for every interation - I poll new thread from the pool using pool.submit.
The Problem I have is my output is like this:
[Thread1], [Thread1, Thread2], [Thread1, Thread2, Thread3]...
While it should be:
[Thread1, Thread2], [Thread3, Thread4]
Why the limitation doesn't work here?
My implementation:
Copier - this is my singleton class.
public class Copier {
private final int POOL_SIZE = 2;
private static volatile Copier instance = null;
private Queue<Reportable> threadQuere = new ConcurrentLinkedQueue();
private static FileCopier fileCopier = new FileCopier();
private Copier() {
}
public static Copier getInstance() {
if (instance == null) {
synchronized (Copier.class) {
if (instance == null) {
instance = new Copier();
}
}
}
return instance;
}
public void fileTransfer(Reportable reportable) {
threadQuere.add(reportable);
ExecutorService pool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(POOL_SIZE);
for (int i=0; i < threadQuere.size(); i++) {
System.out.println("This is the " + (i+1) + " thread");
pool.submit(new CopyThread());
}
pool.shutdown();
try {
pool.awaitTermination(Long.MAX_VALUE, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
CopyThread - represend a thread class
public class CopyThread implements Reportable, Runnable {
private static FileCopier fileCopier = new FileCopier();
#Override
public void report(String bitrate) {
System.out.println(bitrate);
}
#Override
public void run() {
synchronized(fileCopier) {
long startTime = System.nanoTime();
long bytes = fileCopier.copyFile();
long endTime = System.nanoTime();
double duration = (double)(endTime - startTime) / 1000000000; // get in seconds
double bytesInMegas = (double) bytes / 1000000;
report(bytesInMegas + "MB were transferred in " + duration + " seconds");
}
}
}
Driver - my main class where do I create all the threads
public class Driver {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Copier copier = Copier.getInstance();
CopyThread copyThread1 = new CopyThread();
CopyThread copyThread2 = new CopyThread();
CopyThread copyThread3 = new CopyThread();
CopyThread copyThread4 = new CopyThread();
copier.fileTransfer(copyThread1);
copier.fileTransfer(copyThread2);
copier.fileTransfer(copyThread3);
copier.fileTransfer(copyThread4);
int q = 0;
}
}

A simpler solution would be a Semaphore with 2 permits.
This makes sure that "outside" threads can't bypass the limit either, since your solution expects that the simultaneous tasks are limited by the size of the threadpool.
Your solution uses several concurrency tools when a single one would suffice. Your DCL singleton is a bit outdated too.

Everything is probably fine here (although a bit weird). You are printing the thread numbers before submiting, what you need to do is put print in a run method, and you will see that everything works fine. The print are all gonna go off normally, because the area where you are using print has nothing to do with Executors. There is more problems with your code, but I think you did all that just for testing/learning so that's why it's like that.
In that case, like I said, put prints in the run method (you can use some static variable in CopyThread class for counting threads). Your output will be something like 2 prints about thread numbers (1 and 2), 2 prints about how long transfer took and then prints about thread 3 and 4 (I say probably, because we are working with threads, can't be sure of anything) - all this at the step 4 ofcourse, when your fileTransfer submits 4 runnables. Your singleton is outdated, because it uses double checked locking, which is wrong on multithreaded machine, check this: here. That's not ruining your program so worry about it later. About everything else (weird queue usage, fileTransfer method making new threads pools etc.) like I said, it's probably for learning, but if it's not - your queue may as well be deleted, you are using it only for counting and counting like this could be done with some counter variable, and your fileTransfer method should just submit new runnable to pool (which would be instance variable) to transfer a file, not create pool and submit few runnables, it's kinda anty-intuitive.
Edit: check this, I put all in Cat.java for simplicity, changed some things that I had to change (I don't have FileCopier class etc., but answer to your problem is here):
import java.util.*;
import java.util.concurrent.*;
class Copier {
private final int POOL_SIZE = 2;
private static volatile Copier instance = null;
private Copier() {
}
public static Copier getInstance() {
if (instance == null) {
synchronized (Copier.class) {
if (instance == null) {
instance = new Copier();
}
}
}
return instance;
}
public void fileTransfer() {
ExecutorService pool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(POOL_SIZE);
for (int i=0; i < 4; i++) {
pool.submit(new CopyThread());
}
pool.shutdown();
try {
pool.awaitTermination(Long.MAX_VALUE, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
class CopyThread implements Runnable {
private static int counter = 0;
public void report(String bitrate) {
System.out.println(bitrate);
}
Object obj = new Object();
#Override
public void run() {
synchronized(obj) {
System.out.println("This is the " + (++counter) + " thread");
long startTime = System.nanoTime();
long bytes = 0;
for(int i=0; i<100000; i++)
bytes+=1;
long endTime = System.nanoTime();
double duration = (double)(endTime - startTime) / 1000000000; // get in seconds
double bytesInMegas = (double) bytes / 1000000;
report(bytesInMegas + "MB were transferred in " + duration + " seconds");
}
}
}
public class Cat {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Copier copier = Copier.getInstance();
copier.fileTransfer();
}
}

Java [threads] - summarizing table with multiple threads doesn't seem to work

I am learning java, and trying to summarize elements in table with multiple threads, but I am always getting wrong result.
I tried 4 different methods of threads synchronization and all of them failed. Everything is explained in the comments.
My result (bad):
Without threads: 4949937, 15ms
With threads: 4944805, 78ms
Maybe am I executing the System.out.println on summarizeT() too early? I mean before all the threads finish work. With .join() the summarizeT() method works good but. Is the .join() blocking the "main" thread until all other threads are finished?
Main class:
public class Main
{
static int size = 100000; //size of tab
static int length = 100; //each thread gets 100 elements of tab, thread 1 calculates sum from 0 to 99, thread 2 from 100 to 199 etc.
static int[] tab = new int[size];
static Random generator = new Random();
static void initialize()
{
for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)
tab[i] = generator.nextInt(100);
}
static int summarize() //summarize with only one thread
{
int sum = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)
sum += tab[i];
return sum;
}
static int summarizeT() //summarize with more threads (size / length)
{
int threadsCounter = size/length;
int start = 0; //pointer to table from where each thread should start counting
int[] sum = new int[1]; //I am sharing the sum value between threads with table, not sure if it is best method to pass the value between them
sum[0] = 0;
Thread[] threads = new Thread[threadsCounter]; //nedeed for .join() test
for (int i = 0; i < threadsCounter; i++)
{
threads[i] = new Thread(new MyThread(tab, start, sum));
threads[i].start();
start += length; //moving the start pointer, next thread should start counting from next 100 indexes
}
/*for (int i = 0; i < threadsCounter; i++) // adding .join() solves the problem, but is it a good solution?
{
try {
threads[i].join();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}*/
return sum[0];
}
public static void main(String[] args)
{
initialize();
long start = Calendar.getInstance().getTimeInMillis();
System.out.println("Without threads: " + summarize() + ", " + (Calendar.getInstance().getTimeInMillis() - start) + "ms");
start = Calendar.getInstance().getTimeInMillis();
System.out.println("With threads: " + summarizeT() + ", " + (Calendar.getInstance().getTimeInMillis() - start) + "ms"); //giving wrong answer
}
}
MyThread class:
import java.util.concurrent.Semaphore;
public class MyThread extends Thread
{
int[] tab;
int[] sum;
int start;
MyThread(int tab[], int start, int sum[]) //in args: main table, starting index, value that is being shared between threads
{
this.tab = tab;
this.start = start;
this.sum = sum;
}
#Override
public void run()
{
int end = start + Main.length; //place where thread should stop counting
int temp = 0; //nedeed to sumarize the "subtable"
while (start < end)
{
temp += tab[start];
start++;
}
// Method 1
Semaphore semaphore = new Semaphore(1);
try {
semaphore.acquire();
} catch (InterruptedException e1) {
e1.printStackTrace();
}
try
{
sum[0] += temp;
} catch (Exception e) {
} finally {
semaphore.release();
}
// Method 2
/*Object lock = new Object();
synchronized(lock)
{
sum[0] += temp;
}*/
// Method 3
/*synchronized(this)
{
sum[0] += temp;
}*/
// Method 4
//summarize(temp);
// Method 5 - no threads synchronization, works only when .join() is used, the same as other methods
//sum[0] += temp;
}
private synchronized void summarize(int value)
{
sum[0] += value;
}
}

Isn't the problem here that you create a lock object , or semaphore object, in each thread, rather than having one object that all threads synchronise on?
Each Thread creates is own Semaphore object ( for example ) so no other thread will ever contend with it. You need to create an object that ALL threads have access to and synchronise on that. You might consider synchronising on the array that you are writing the results in to itself.

There are some problems with your solution.
You should use AtomicInteger to hold results. that way you don't need to synchronize sum update.
BTW the way you synchronize is invalid. For semaphores to work you need to share same instance between all threads. And your try/catch/finally blocks are invalid. You should do acquire() and sum update in one try block, and release() in it's finally. That way you did it. It is possible that you'll do sum update even though acquire() failed.
Also you return from summarizeT() without waiting for threads to finish. You have to implement thread.join() logic or some other way to wait.

comparison of code performance, threaded versus non-threaded

I have some thread-related questions, assuming the following code. Please ignore the possible inefficiency of the code, I'm only interested in the thread part.
//code without thread use
public static int getNextPrime(int from) {
int nextPrime = from+1;
boolean superPrime = false;
while(!superPrime) {
boolean prime = true;
for(int i = 2;i &lt nextPrime;i++) {
if(nextPrime % i == 0) {
prime = false;
}
}
if(prime) {
superPrime = true;
} else {
nextPrime++;
}
}
return nextPrime;
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
int primeStart = 5;
ArrayList list = new ArrayList();
for(int i = 0;i &lt 10000;i++) {
list.add(primeStart);
primeStart = getNextPrime(primeStart);
}
}
If I'm running the code like this and it takes about 56 seconds. If, however, I have the following code (as an alternative):
public class PrimeRunnable implements Runnable {
private int from;
private int lastPrime;
public PrimeRunnable(int from) {
this.from = from;
}
public boolean isPrime(int number) {
for(int i = 2;i &lt from;i++) {
if((number % i) == 0) {
return false;
}
}
lastPrime = number;
return true;
}
public int getLastPrime() {
return lastPrime;
}
public void run() {
while(!isPrime(++from))
;
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
int primeStart = 5;
ArrayList list = new ArrayList();
for(int i = 0;i &lt 10000;i++) {
PrimeRunnable pr = new PrimeRunnable(primeStart);
Thread t = new Thread(pr);
t.start();
t.join();
primeStart = pr.getLastPrime();
list.add(primeStart);
}
}
The whole operation takes about 7 seconds. I am almost certain that even though I only create one thread at a time, a thread doesn't always finish when another is created. Is that right? I am also curious: why is the operation ending so fast?
When I'm joining a thread, do other threads keep running in the background, or is the joined thread the only one that's running?

By putting the join() in the loop, you're starting a thread, then waiting for that thread to stop before running the next one. I think you probably want something more like this:
public static void main(String[] args) {
int primeStart = 5;
// Make thread-safe list for adding results to
List list = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList());
// Pull thread pool count out into a value so you can easily change it
int threadCount = 10000;
Thread[] threads = new Thread[threadCount];
// Start all threads
for(int i = 0;i < threadCount;i++) {
// Pass list to each Runnable here
// Also, I added +i here as I think the intention is
// to test 10000 possible numbers>5 for primeness -
// was testing 5 in all loops
PrimeRunnable pr = new PrimeRunnable(primeStart+i, list);
Thread[i] threads = new Thread(pr);
threads[i].start(); // thread is now running in parallel
}
// All threads now running in parallel
// Then wait for all threads to complete
for(int i=0; i<threadCount; i++) {
threads[i].join();
}
}
By the way pr.getLastPrime() will return 0 in the case of no prime, so you might want to filter that out before adding it to your list. The PrimeRunnable has to absorb the work of adding to the final results list. Also, I think PrimeRunnable was actually broken by still having incrementing code in it. I think this is fixed, but I'm not actually compiling this.
public class PrimeRunnable implements Runnable {
private int from;
private List results; // shared but thread-safe
public PrimeRunnable(int from, List results) {
this.from = from;
this.results = results;
}
public void isPrime(int number) {
for(int i = 2;i < from;i++) {
if((number % i) == 0) {
return;
}
}
// found prime, add to shared results
this.results.add(number);
}
public void run() {
isPrime(from); // don't increment, just check one number
}
}
Running 10000 threads in parallel is not a good idea. It's a much better idea to create a reasonably sized fixed thread pool and have them pull work from a shared queue. Basically every worker pulls tasks from the same queue, works on them and saves the results somewhere. The closest port of this with Java 5+ is to use an ExecutorService backed by a thread pool. You could also use a CompletionService which combines an ExecutorService with a result queue.
An ExecutorService version would look like:
public static void main(String[] args) {
int primeStart = 5;
// Make thread-safe list for adding results to
List list = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList());
int threadCount = 16; // Experiment with this to find best on your machine
ExecutorService exec = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(threadCount);
int workCount = 10000; // See how # of work is now separate from # of threads?
for(int i = 0;i < workCount;i++) {
// submit work to the svc for execution across the thread pool
exec.execute(new PrimeRunnable(primeStart+i, list));
}
// Wait for all tasks to be done or timeout to go off
exec.awaitTermination(1, TimeUnit.DAYS);
}
Hope that gave you some ideas. And I hope the last example seemed a lot better than the first.

You can test this better by making the exact code in your first example run with threads. Sub your main method with this:
private static int currentPrime;
public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
for (currentPrime = 0; currentPrime < 10000; currentPrime++) {
Thread t = new Thread(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
getNextPrime(currentPrime);
}});
t.run();
t.join();
}
}
This will run in the same time as the original.
To answer your "join" question: yes, other threads can be running in the background when you use "join", but in this particular case you will only have one active thread at a time, because you are blocking the creation of new threads until the last thread is done executing.

JesperE is right, but I don't believe in only giving hints (at least outside a classroom):
Note this loop in the non-threaded version:
for(int i = 2;i < nextPrime;i++) {
if(nextPrime % i == 0) {
prime = false;
}
}
As opposed to this in the threaded version:
for(int i = 2;i < from;i++) {
if((number % i) == 0) {
return false;
}
}
The first loop will always run completely through, while the second will exit early if it finds a divisor.
You could make the first loop also exit early by adding a break statement like this:
for(int i = 2;i < nextPrime;i++) {
if(nextPrime % i == 0) {
prime = false;
break;
}
}

Read your code carefully. The two cases aren't doing the same thing, and it has nothing to do with threads.
When you join a thread, other threads will run in the background, yes.

Running a test, the second one doesn't seem to take 9 seconds--in fact, it takes at least as long as the first (which is to be expected, threding can't help the way it's implemented in your example.
Thread.join will only return when the thread.joined terminates, then the current thread will continue, the one you called join on will be dead.
For a quick reference--think threading when starting one iteration does not depend on the result of the previous one.