Question

I am a building a console Sudoku Solver where the main objective is raw speed.

I now have a ManagerThread that starts WorkerThreads to compute the neibhbors of each cell. So one WorkerThread is started for each cell right now. How can I re-use an existing thread that has completed its work?

The Thread Pool Pattern seems to be the solution, but I don’t understand what to do to prevent the thread from dying once its job has been completed.

ps : I do not expect to gain much performance for this particular task, just want to experiment how multi-threading works before applying it to the more complex parts of the code.

Thanks

Answer 1

Have a look at the Java SE provided java.util.concurrent API. You can create a threadpool using Executors#newFixedThreadPool() and you can submit tasks using the ExecutorService methods. No need to reinvent your own threadpool. Also see the Sun tutorial on the subject.