I'm wondering whether there is any advantage to keeping the same threads over the course of the execution of an object, rather than re-using the same Thread objects. I have an object for which a single (frequently used) method is parallelized using local Thread variables, such that every time the method is called, new Threads (and Runnables) are instantiated. Because the method is called so frequently, a single execution may instantiate upwards of a hundred thousand Thread objects, even though there are never more than a few (~4-6) active at any given time.
Following is a cut down example of how this method is currently implemented, to give a sense of what I mean. For reference, n is of course the pre-determined number of threads to use, whereas this.dataStructure is a (thread-safe) Map which serves as the input to the computation, as well as being modified by the computation. There are other inputs involved, but as they are not relevant to this question, I've omitted their usage. I've also omitted exception handling for the same reason.
Runnable[] tasks = new Runnable[n];
Thread[] threads = new Thread[n];
ArrayBlockingQueue<MyObject> inputs = new ArrayBlockingQueue<>(this.dataStructure.size());
inputs.addAll(this.dataStructure.values());
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
tasks[i] = () -> {
while (true) {
MyObject input = inputs.poll(1L, TimeUnit.MICROSECONDS);
if (input == null) return;
// run computations over this.dataStructure
}
};
threads[i] = new Thread(tasks[i]);
threads[i].start();
}
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
threads[i].join();
Because these Threads (and their runnables) always execute the same way using a single ArrayBlockingQueue as input, an alternative to this would be to just "refill the queue" every time the method is called and just re-start the same Threads. This is easily implemented, but I'm unsure as to whether it would make any difference one way or the other. I'm not too familiar with concurrency, so any help is appreciated.
PS.: If there is a more elegant way to handle the polling, that would also be helpful.
It is not possible to start a Thread more than once, but conceptually, the answer to your question is yes.
This is normally accomplished with a thread pool. A thread pool is a set of Threads which rarely actually terminate. Instead, an application is passes its task to the thread pool, which picks a Thread in which to run it. The thread pool then decides whether the Thread should be terminated or reused after the task completes.
Java has some classes which make use of thread pools quite easy: ExecutorService and CompletableFuture.
ExecutorService usage typically looks like this:
ExecutorService executor = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
tasks[i] = () -> {
while (true) {
MyObject input = inputs.poll(1L, TimeUnit.MICROSECONDS);
if (input == null) return;
// run computations over this.dataStructure
}
};
executor.submit(tasks[i]);
}
// Doesn't interrupt or halt any tasks. Will wait for them all to finish
// before terminating its threads.
executor.shutdown();
executor.awaitTermination(Long.MAX_VALUE, TimeUnit.DAYS);
Executors has other methods which can create thread pools, like newFixedThreadPool() and newWorkStealingPool(). You can decide for yourself which one best suits your needs.
CompletableFuture use might look like this:
Runnable[] tasks = new Runnable[n];
CompletableFuture<?>[] futures = new CompletableFuture<?>[n];
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
tasks[i] = () -> {
while (true) {
MyObject input = inputs.poll(1L, TimeUnit.MICROSECONDS);
if (input == null) return;
// run computations over this.dataStructure
}
};
futures[i] = CompletableFuture.runAsync(tasks[i]);
}
CompletableFuture.allOf(futures).get();
The disadvantage of CompletableFuture is that the tasks cannot be canceled or interrupted. (Calling cancel will mark the task as completing with an exception instead of completing successfully, but the task will not be interrupted.)
Per definition, you cannot restart a thread. According to the documentation:
It is never legal to start a thread more than once. In particular, a thread may not be restarted once it has completed execution.
Nevertheless a thread is a valuable resource, and there are implementations to reuse threads. Have a look at the Java Tutorial about Executors.
Imagine I have following code:
final ExecutorService threadPool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(
NUMBER_OF_WORKERS);
for (int i=0; i < NUMBER_OF_WORKERS; i++)
{
final Worker worker = new BirthWorker(...);
threadPool.execute(worker);
}
Now I need a piece of code, which waits, until all workers have completed their work.
Options I'm aware of:
while (!threadPool.isTerminated()) {}
Modify the code like that:
final List futures = new ArrayList(NUMBER_OF_WORKERS);
final ExecutorService threadPool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(NUMBER_OF_WORKERS);
for (int i=0; i < NUMBER_OF_WORKERS; i++)
{
final Worker worker = new Worker(...);
futures.add(threadPool.submit(worker));
}
for (final Future future : futures) {
future.get();
}
// When we arrive here, all workers are guaranteed to have completed their work.
What is the best practice to wait for the completion of all workers?
I would suggest you use CountDownLatch (assuming this is one time activity) where in your constructor, you can specify how many threads you want to wait for and you share that instance accross the threads and you wait on all the threads to complete using await api (using timeout or complete blocking) and your thread's calling countdown api when they are done.
Another option would be, to call join method in thread to wait for their completion if you have access to each and every thread that you wish to complete.
I would use ThreadPoolExecutor.invokeAll(Collection<? extends Callable<T>> tasks)
API: Executes the given tasks, returning a list of Futures holding their status and results when all complete
CountDownLatch,as stated above, would do the work well, just keep in mind that you want to shut down the executur after your done:
final ExecutorService threadPool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(
NUMBER_OF_WORKERS);
for (int i=0; i < NUMBER_OF_WORKERS; i++)
{
final Worker worker = new BirthWorker(...);
threadPool.execute(worker);
}
threadPool.shutdown();
unless you shut it down, threadPool.isTerminated will stay false, even when all the workers are done.
I am fairly new with java executors, so this maybe an easy question.
ExecutorService executorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(NumberOfThreads - 1);
do_work();
for(int i = 1; i < NumberOfThreads; i++)
{
executorService.execute(new Runnable()
{
public void run()
{
do_work();
}
});
}
My question is:
If I create a fixed thread pool with 'N' threads, and if I want to execute 'N' tasks, like the code above. Do I have guarantees that each thread will only execute one task (do_work())?
No. It's a pool, and the assignment of threads to tasks doesn't make such guarantees.
e.g. imagine your do_work() method completes immediately. By the time you submit your 2nd Runnable, all the threads in the pool will be available, and any one of them will be a candidate for your job.
I am executing millions of iteration and I want to parallelize this. Hence decided to add the task [each iteration] to the Thread Pool.
Now, if I add all the iteration to the Thread Pool, it might throw an OutOfMemoryError. I want to handle that gracefully, so is there any way to know about the availability of the worker Thread in the Thread Pool?
Once it's available, add the Runnable to the Worker Thread.
for(int i=0; i<10000000000; i++) {
executor.submit(new Task(i));
}
Each of those tasks merely take 1 sec to complete.
Why don't you set a limit to how many tasks can run concurrently. Like:
HashSet<Future> futures = new HashSet<>();
int concurrentTasks = 1000;
for (int ii=0; ii<100000000; ii++) {
while(concurrentTasks-- > 0 && ii<100000000) {
concurrentTasks.add(executor.submit(new Task(ii)));
}
Iterator<Future> it = concurrentTasks.iterator();
while(it.hasNext()) {
Future task = it.next();
if (task.isDone()) {
concurrentTasks++;
it.remove();
}
}
}
You'll want to use something like this:
ArrayBlockingQueue<Runnable> queue = new ArrayBlockingQueue<Runnable>(MAX_PENDING_TASKS);
Executor executor = new ThreadPoolExecutor(MIN_THREADS, MAX_THREADS, IDLE_TIMEOUT, TimeUnit.SECONDS, queue, new ThreadPoolExecutor.CallerRunsPolicy());
for(int i=0; i<10000000000; i++) {
executor.submit(new Task(i));
}
Basically you create a thread pool with min/max threads and an array backed queue. When you hit the limit of pending tasks, the "caller runs policy" kicks in and your main thread ends up running the next task (giving time for your other tasks to complete and open slots in the queue).
Since you've stated that your tasks are short lived, this seems like an optimal strategy.
The values for MAX_PENDING_TASKS and MIN_THREADS are something you can fiddle with to figure out what the optimal values are for your workload, but MAX_PENDING_TASKS should be at least twice MIN_THREADS and probably more like 10 to 100 times.
You should use java.lang.Runtime
The biggest memory issue is probably going to be your Object creation, not in adding them to your Executor, so that's where you should be calling Runtime.getRuntime().freeMemory().
I'm writing an application that has 5 threads that get some information from web simultaneously and fill 5 different fields in a buffer class.
I need to validate buffer data and store it in a database when all threads finished their job.
How can I do this (get alerted when all threads finished their work) ?
The approach I take is to use an ExecutorService to manage pools of threads.
ExecutorService es = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
for(int i=0;i<5;i++)
es.execute(new Runnable() { /* your task */ });
es.shutdown();
boolean finished = es.awaitTermination(1, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
// all tasks have finished or the time has been reached.
You can join to the threads. The join blocks until the thread completes.
for (Thread thread : threads) {
thread.join();
}
Note that join throws an InterruptedException. You'll have to decide what to do if that happens (e.g. try to cancel the other threads to prevent unnecessary work being done).
Have a look at various solutions.
join() API has been introduced in early versions of Java. Some good alternatives are available with this concurrent package since the JDK 1.5 release.
ExecutorService#invokeAll()
Executes the given tasks, returning a list of Futures holding their status and results when everything is completed.
Refer to this related SE question for code example:
How to use invokeAll() to let all thread pool do their task?
CountDownLatch
A synchronization aid that allows one or more threads to wait until a set of operations being performed in other threads completes.
A CountDownLatch is initialized with a given count. The await methods block until the current count reaches zero due to invocations of the countDown() method, after which all waiting threads are released and any subsequent invocations of await return immediately. This is a one-shot phenomenon -- the count cannot be reset. If you need a version that resets the count, consider using a CyclicBarrier.
Refer to this question for usage of CountDownLatch
How to wait for a thread that spawns it's own thread?
ForkJoinPool or newWorkStealingPool() in Executors
Iterate through all Future objects created after submitting to ExecutorService
Wait/block the Thread Main until some other threads complete their work.
As #Ravindra babu said it can be achieved in various ways, but showing with examples.
java.lang.Thread.join() Since:1.0
public static void joiningThreads() throws InterruptedException {
Thread t1 = new Thread( new LatchTask(1, null), "T1" );
Thread t2 = new Thread( new LatchTask(7, null), "T2" );
Thread t3 = new Thread( new LatchTask(5, null), "T3" );
Thread t4 = new Thread( new LatchTask(2, null), "T4" );
// Start all the threads
t1.start();
t2.start();
t3.start();
t4.start();
// Wait till all threads completes
t1.join();
t2.join();
t3.join();
t4.join();
}
java.util.concurrent.CountDownLatch Since:1.5
.countDown() « Decrements the count of the latch group.
.await() « The await methods block until the current count reaches zero.
If you created latchGroupCount = 4 then countDown() should be called 4 times to make count 0. So, that await() will release the blocking threads.
public static void latchThreads() throws InterruptedException {
int latchGroupCount = 4;
CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(latchGroupCount);
Thread t1 = new Thread( new LatchTask(1, latch), "T1" );
Thread t2 = new Thread( new LatchTask(7, latch), "T2" );
Thread t3 = new Thread( new LatchTask(5, latch), "T3" );
Thread t4 = new Thread( new LatchTask(2, latch), "T4" );
t1.start();
t2.start();
t3.start();
t4.start();
//latch.countDown();
latch.await(); // block until latchGroupCount is 0.
}
Example code of Threaded class LatchTask. To test the approach use joiningThreads();
and latchThreads(); from main method.
class LatchTask extends Thread {
CountDownLatch latch;
int iterations = 10;
public LatchTask(int iterations, CountDownLatch latch) {
this.iterations = iterations;
this.latch = latch;
}
#Override
public void run() {
String threadName = Thread.currentThread().getName();
System.out.println(threadName + " : Started Task...");
for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++) {
System.out.println(threadName + " : " + i);
MainThread_Wait_TillWorkerThreadsComplete.sleep(1);
}
System.out.println(threadName + " : Completed Task");
// countDown() « Decrements the count of the latch group.
if(latch != null)
latch.countDown();
}
}
CyclicBarriers A synchronization aid that allows a set of threads to all wait for each other to reach a common barrier point.CyclicBarriers are useful in programs involving a fixed sized party of threads that must occasionally wait for each other. The barrier is called cyclic because it can be re-used after the waiting threads are released.
CyclicBarrier barrier = new CyclicBarrier(3);
barrier.await();
For example refer this Concurrent_ParallelNotifyies class.
Executer framework: we can use ExecutorService to create a thread pool, and tracks the progress of the asynchronous tasks with Future.
submit(Runnable), submit(Callable) which return Future Object. By using future.get() function we can block the main thread till the working threads completes its work.
invokeAll(...) - returns a list of Future objects via which you can obtain the results of the executions of each Callable.
Find example of using Interfaces Runnable, Callable with Executor framework.
#See also
Find out thread is still alive?
Apart from Thread.join() suggested by others, java 5 introduced the executor framework. There you don't work with Thread objects. Instead, you submit your Callable or Runnable objects to an executor. There's a special executor that is meant to execute multiple tasks and return their results out of order. That's the ExecutorCompletionService:
ExecutorCompletionService executor;
for (..) {
executor.submit(Executors.callable(yourRunnable));
}
Then you can repeatedly call take() until there are no more Future<?> objects to return, which means all of them are completed.
Another thing that may be relevant, depending on your scenario is CyclicBarrier.
A synchronization aid that allows a set of threads to all wait for each other to reach a common barrier point. CyclicBarriers are useful in programs involving a fixed sized party of threads that must occasionally wait for each other. The barrier is called cyclic because it can be re-used after the waiting threads are released.
Another possibility is the CountDownLatch object, which is useful for simple situations : since you know in advance the number of threads, you initialize it with the relevant count, and pass the reference of the object to each thread.
Upon completion of its task, each thread calls CountDownLatch.countDown() which decrements the internal counter. The main thread, after starting all others, should do the CountDownLatch.await() blocking call. It will be released as soon as the internal counter has reached 0.
Pay attention that with this object, an InterruptedException can be thrown as well.
You do
for (Thread t : new Thread[] { th1, th2, th3, th4, th5 })
t.join()
After this for loop, you can be sure all threads have finished their jobs.
Store the Thread-objects into some collection (like a List or a Set), then loop through the collection once the threads are started and call join() on the Threads.
You can use Threadf#join method for this purpose.
Although not relevant to OP's problem, if you are interested in synchronization (more precisely, a rendez-vous) with exactly one thread, you may use an Exchanger
In my case, I needed to pause the parent thread until the child thread did something, e.g. completed its initialization. A CountDownLatch also works well.
I created a small helper method to wait for a few Threads to finish:
public static void waitForThreadsToFinish(Thread... threads) {
try {
for (Thread thread : threads) {
thread.join();
}
}
catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
An executor service can be used to manage multiple threads including status and completion. See http://programmingexamples.wikidot.com/executorservice
try this, will work.
Thread[] threads = new Thread[10];
List<Thread> allThreads = new ArrayList<Thread>();
for(Thread thread : threads){
if(null != thread){
if(thread.isAlive()){
allThreads.add(thread);
}
}
}
while(!allThreads.isEmpty()){
Iterator<Thread> ite = allThreads.iterator();
while(ite.hasNext()){
Thread thread = ite.next();
if(!thread.isAlive()){
ite.remove();
}
}
}
I had a similar problem and ended up using Java 8 parallelStream.
requestList.parallelStream().forEach(req -> makeRequest(req));
It's super simple and readable.
Behind the scenes it is using default JVM’s fork join pool which means that it will wait for all the threads to finish before continuing. For my case it was a neat solution, because it was the only parallelStream in my application. If you have more than one parallelStream running simultaneously, please read the link below.
More information about parallel streams here.
The existing answers said could join() each thread.
But there are several ways to get the thread array / list:
Add the Thread into a list on creation.
Use ThreadGroup to manage the threads.
Following code will use the ThreadGruop approach. It create a group first, then when create each thread specify the group in constructor, later could get the thread array via ThreadGroup.enumerate()
Code
SyncBlockLearn.java
import org.testng.Assert;
import org.testng.annotations.Test;
/**
* synchronized block - learn,
*
* #author eric
* #date Apr 20, 2015 1:37:11 PM
*/
public class SyncBlockLearn {
private static final int TD_COUNT = 5; // thread count
private static final int ROUND_PER_THREAD = 100; // round for each thread,
private static final long INC_DELAY = 10; // delay of each increase,
// sync block test,
#Test
public void syncBlockTest() throws InterruptedException {
Counter ct = new Counter();
ThreadGroup tg = new ThreadGroup("runner");
for (int i = 0; i < TD_COUNT; i++) {
new Thread(tg, ct, "t-" + i).start();
}
Thread[] tArr = new Thread[TD_COUNT];
tg.enumerate(tArr); // get threads,
// wait all runner to finish,
for (Thread t : tArr) {
t.join();
}
System.out.printf("\nfinal count: %d\n", ct.getCount());
Assert.assertEquals(ct.getCount(), TD_COUNT * ROUND_PER_THREAD);
}
static class Counter implements Runnable {
private final Object lkOn = new Object(); // the object to lock on,
private int count = 0;
#Override
public void run() {
System.out.printf("[%s] begin\n", Thread.currentThread().getName());
for (int i = 0; i < ROUND_PER_THREAD; i++) {
synchronized (lkOn) {
System.out.printf("[%s] [%d] inc to: %d\n", Thread.currentThread().getName(), i, ++count);
}
try {
Thread.sleep(INC_DELAY); // wait a while,
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
System.out.printf("[%s] end\n", Thread.currentThread().getName());
}
public int getCount() {
return count;
}
}
}
The main thread will wait for all threads in the group to finish.
I had similar situation , where i had to wait till all child threads complete its execution then only i could get the status result for each of them .. hence i needed to wait till all child thread completed.
below is my code where i did multi-threading using
public static void main(String[] args) {
List<RunnerPojo> testList = ExcelObject.getTestStepsList();//.parallelStream().collect(Collectors.toList());
int threadCount = ConfigFileReader.getInstance().readConfig().getParallelThreadCount();
System.out.println("Thread count is : ========= " + threadCount); // 5
ExecutorService threadExecutor = new DriverScript().threadExecutor(testList, threadCount);
boolean isProcessCompleted = waitUntilCondition(() -> threadExecutor.isTerminated()); // Here i used waitUntil condition
if (isProcessCompleted) {
testList.forEach(x -> {
System.out.println("Test Name: " + x.getTestCaseId());
System.out.println("Test Status : " + x.getStatus());
System.out.println("======= Test Steps ===== ");
x.getTestStepsList().forEach(y -> {
System.out.println("Step Name: " + y.getDescription());
System.out.println("Test caseId : " + y.getTestCaseId());
System.out.println("Step Status: " + y.getResult());
System.out.println("\n ============ ==========");
});
});
}
Below method is for distribution of list with parallel proccessing
// This method will split my list and run in a parallel process with mutliple threads
private ExecutorService threadExecutor(List<RunnerPojo> testList, int threadSize) {
ExecutorService exec = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(threadSize);
testList.forEach(tests -> {
exec.submit(() -> {
driverScript(tests);
});
});
exec.shutdown();
return exec;
}
This is my wait until method: here you can wait till your condition satisfies within do while loop . in my case i waited for some max timeout .
this will keep checking until your threadExecutor.isTerminated() is true with polling period of 5 sec.
static boolean waitUntilCondition(Supplier<Boolean> function) {
Double timer = 0.0;
Double maxTimeOut = 20.0;
boolean isFound;
do {
isFound = function.get();
if (isFound) {
break;
} else {
try {
Thread.sleep(5000); // Sleeping for 5 sec (main thread will sleep for 5 sec)
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
timer++;
System.out.println("Waiting for condition to be true .. waited .." + timer * 5 + " sec.");
}
} while (timer < maxTimeOut + 1.0);
return isFound;
}
Use this in your main thread: while(!executor.isTerminated());
Put this line of code after starting all the threads from executor service. This will only start the main thread after all the threads started by executors are finished. Make sure to call executor.shutdown(); before the above loop.