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Tutorial of Java's concurrent packages

Posted on Edited on In , Valine:
Tutorial of Java's concurrent packages

Processes and Threads

Processes A process has a self-contained execution environment. A process generally has a complete, private set of basic run-time resources; in particular, each process has its own memory space.

Threads Threads are sometimes called lightweight processes. Both processes and threads provide an execution environment, but creating a new thread requires fewer resources than creating a new process. Threads exist within a process — every process has at least one. Threads share the process's resources, including memory and open files. This makes for efficient, but potentially problematic, communication.

Thread Objects

Each thread is associated with an instance of the class Thread. There are two basic strategies for using Thread objects to create a concurrent application.

  1. To directly control thread creation and management, simply instantiate Thread each time the application needs to initiate an asynchronous task.
  2. To abstract thread management from the rest of your application, pass the application's tasks to an executor.

Defining and Starting a Thread

  1. Provide a Runnable object. The Runnable interface defines a single method, run, meant to contain the code executed in the thread. The Runnable object is passed to the Thread constructor, as in the HelloRunnable example:
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public class HelloRunnable implements Runnable {

    public void run() {
        System.out.println("Hello from a thread!");
    }

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        (new Thread(new HelloRunnable())).start();
    }

}
  1. Subclass Thread. The Thread class itself implements Runnable, though its run method does nothing. An application can subclass Thread, providing its own implementation of run, as in the HelloThread example:
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public class HelloThread extends Thread {

    public void run() {
        System.out.println("Hello from a thread!");
    }

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        (new HelloThread()).start();
    }

}

  1. Pausing Execution with Sleep Thread.sleep causes the current thread to suspend execution for a specified period.

  2. Interrupts An interrupt is an indication to a thread that it should stop what it is doing and do something else.

  • If the thread is frequently invoking methods that throw InterruptedException, it simply returns from the run method after it catches that exception
  • if a thread goes a long time without invoking a method that throws InterruptedException? Then it must periodically invoke Thread.interrupted, which returns true if an interrupt has been received.
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for (int i = 0; i < importantInfo.length; i++) {
    // Pause for 4 seconds
    try {
        Thread.sleep(4000);
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        // We've been interrupted: no more messages.
        return;
    }
    // Print a message
    System.out.println(importantInfo[i]);
}


for (int i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++) {
    heavyCrunch(inputs[i]);
    if (Thread.interrupted()) {
        // We've been interrupted: no more crunching.
        return;
    }
}
  1. Joins The join method allows one thread to wait for the completion of another. If t is a Thread object whose thread is currently executing,causes the current thread to pause execution until t's thread terminates.
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t.join();

Synchronization

Threads communicate primarily by sharing access to fields and the objects reference fields refer to.Synchronization can introduce thread contention, which occurs when two or more threads try to access the same resource simultaneously and cause the Java runtime to execute one or more threads more slowly, or even suspend their execution. Starvation and livelock are forms of thread contention.

Thread Interference Interference happens when two operations, running in different threads, but acting on the same data, interleave. This means that the two operations consist of multiple steps, and the sequences of steps overlap.

Memory Consistency Errors Memory consistency errors occur when different threads have inconsistent views of what should be the same data. The key to avoiding memory consistency errors is understanding the happens-before relationship. 

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// Thread 1
int counter = 0;
counter++;

// Thread 2
System.out.println(counter);

Synchronized Methods

To make a method synchronized, simply add the synchronized keyword to its declaration:

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public class SynchronizedCounter {
    private int c = 0;

    public synchronized void increment() {
        c++;
    }

    public synchronized void decrement() {
        c--;
    }

    public synchronized int value() {
        return c;
    }
}

  1. It is not possible for two invocations of synchronized methods on the same object to interleave. When one thread is executing a synchronized method for an object, all other threads that invoke synchronized methods for the same object block (suspend execution) until the first thread is done with the object.

  2. When a synchronized method exits, it automatically establishes a happens-before relationship with any subsequent invocation of a synchronized method for the same object. This guarantees that changes to the state of the object are visible to all threads.

Synchronized Statements

Unlike synchronized methods, synchronized statements must specify the object that provides the intrinsic lock

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public void addName(String name) {
    synchronized(this) {
        lastName = name;
        nameCount++;
    }
    nameList.add(name);
}

Liveness

Deadlock

Deadlock describes a situation where two or more threads are blocked forever, waiting for each other.

Alphonse and Gaston are friends, and great believers in courtesy. A strict rule of courtesy is that when you bow to a friend, you must remain bowed until your friend has a chance to return the bow. Unfortunately, this rule does not account for the possibility that two friends might bow to each other at the same time. This example application, Deadlock, models this possibility:

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public class Deadlock {
    static class Friend {
        private final String name;
        public Friend(String name) {
            this.name = name;
        }
        public String getName() {
            return this.name;
        }
        public synchronized void bow(Friend bower) {
            System.out.format("%s: %s"
                + "  has bowed to me!%n", 
                this.name, bower.getName());
            bower.bowBack(this);
        }
        public synchronized void bowBack(Friend bower) {
            System.out.format("%s: %s"
                + " has bowed back to me!%n",
                this.name, bower.getName());
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        final Friend alphonse =
            new Friend("Alphonse");
        final Friend gaston =
            new Friend("Gaston");
        new Thread(new Runnable() {
            public void run() { alphonse.bow(gaston); }
        }).start();
        new Thread(new Runnable() {
            public void run() { gaston.bow(alphonse); }
        }).start();
    }
}

Starvation

Starvation describes a situation where a thread is unable to gain regular access to shared resources and is unable to make progress. This happens when shared resources are made unavailable for long periods by "greedy" threads. For example, suppose an object provides a synchronized method that often takes a long time to return. If one thread invokes this method frequently, other threads that also need frequent synchronized access to the same object will often be blocked.

Livelock

A thread often acts in response to the action of another thread. If the other thread's action is also a response to the action of another thread, then livelock may result. As with deadlock, livelocked threads are unable to make further progress. However, the threads are not blocked — they are simply too busy responding to each other to resume work. This is comparable to two people attempting to pass each other in a corridor: Alphonse moves to his left to let Gaston pass, while Gaston moves to his right to let Alphonse pass. Seeing that they are still blocking each other, Alphone moves to his right, while Gaston moves to his left. They're still blocking each other, so...

High Level Concurrency Objects

Only one thread can own a Lock object at a time. Lock objects also support a wait/notify mechanism, through their associated Condition objects.

Fork/Join

The fork/join framework is an implementation of the ExecutorService interface that helps you take advantage of multiple processors. It is designed for work that can be broken into smaller pieces recursively. The goal is to use all the available processing power to enhance the performance of your application.

As with any ExecutorService implementation, the fork/join framework distributes tasks to worker threads in a thread pool. The fork/join framework is distinct because it uses a work-stealing algorithm. Worker threads that run out of things to do can steal tasks from other threads that are still busy.

The center of the fork/join framework is the ForkJoinPool class, an extension of the AbstractExecutorService class. ForkJoinPool implements the core work-stealing algorithm and can execute ForkJoinTask processes.

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if (my portion of the work is small enough)
  do the work directly
else
  split my work into two pieces
  invoke the two pieces and wait for the results
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public class ForkBlur extends RecursiveAction {
    private int[] mSource;
    private int mStart;
    private int mLength;
    private int[] mDestination;
  
    // Processing window size; should be odd.
    private int mBlurWidth = 15;
  
    public ForkBlur(int[] src, int start, int length, int[] dst) {
        mSource = src;
        mStart = start;
        mLength = length;
        mDestination = dst;
    }

    protected void computeDirectly() {
        int sidePixels = (mBlurWidth - 1) / 2;
        for (int index = mStart; index < mStart + mLength; index++) {
            // Calculate average.
            float rt = 0, gt = 0, bt = 0;
            for (int mi = -sidePixels; mi <= sidePixels; mi++) {
                int mindex = Math.min(Math.max(mi + index, 0),
                                    mSource.length - 1);
                int pixel = mSource[mindex];
                rt += (float)((pixel & 0x00ff0000) >> 16)
                      / mBlurWidth;
                gt += (float)((pixel & 0x0000ff00) >>  8)
                      / mBlurWidth;
                bt += (float)((pixel & 0x000000ff) >>  0)
                      / mBlurWidth;
            }
          
            // Reassemble destination pixel.
            int dpixel = (0xff000000     ) |
                   (((int)rt) << 16) |
                   (((int)gt) <<  8) |
                   (((int)bt) <<  0);
            mDestination[index] = dpixel;
        }
    }

    protected static int sThreshold = 100000;

    protected void compute() {
        if (mLength < sThreshold) {
            computeDirectly();
            return;
        }
        
        int split = mLength / 2;
        
        invokeAll(new ForkBlur(mSource, mStart, split, mDestination),
                  new ForkBlur(mSource, mStart + split, mLength - split,
                               mDestination));
}
  1. Create a task that represents all of the work to be done.

// source image pixels are in src // destination image pixels are in dst 

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ForkBlur fb = new ForkBlur(src, 0, src.length, dst);

  1. Create the ForkJoinPool that will run the task.
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ForkJoinPool pool = new ForkJoinPool();
  1. Run the task.
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pool.invoke(fb);

Referece from https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/concurrency/runthread.html