Question

I have the following situation:

In order to run a algorithm, i must run several threads and each thread will set a instance variable x, right before it dies. The problem is that these threads dont return immediately:

public Foo myAlgorithm()
{
    //create n Runnables (n is big)
    //start these runnables (may take long time do die)

    //i need the x value of each runnable here, but they havent finished yet!

    //get average x from all the runnables

    return new Foo(averageX);
}

Should i use wait notify ? Or should i just embed a while loop and check for termination ?

Thanks everyone!

Answer 1

Create some shared storage to hold the x value from each thread, or just store the sum if that’s sufficient. Use a CountDownLatch to wait for the threads to terminate. Each thread, when finished, would call CountDownLatch.countDown() and your myAlgorithm method would use the CountDownLatch.await() method to wait for them.

Edit: Here’s a complete example of the approach I suggested. It created 39 worker threads, each of which adds a random number to a shared sum. When all of the workers are finished, the average is computed and printed.

import java.util.Random;
import java.util.concurrent.CountDownLatch;
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger;

class Worker implements Runnable {

    private final AtomicInteger sum;
    private final CountDownLatch latch;

    public Worker(AtomicInteger sum, CountDownLatch latch) {
        this.sum = sum;
        this.latch = latch;
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
        Random random = new Random();

        try {
            // Sleep a random length of time from 5-10s
            Thread.sleep(random.nextInt(5000) + 5000);
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        // Compute x
        int x = random.nextInt(500);

        // Add to the shared sum
        System.out.println("Adding " + x + " to sum");
        sum.addAndGet(x);

        // This runnable is finished, so count down
        latch.countDown();
    }
}

class Program {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // There will be 39 workers
        final int N = 39;

        // Holds the sum of all results from all workers
        AtomicInteger sum = new AtomicInteger();
        // Tracks how many workers are still working
        CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(N);

        System.out.println("Starting " + N + " workers");

        for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) {
            // Each worker uses the shared atomic sum and countdown latch.
            Worker worker = new Worker(sum, latch);

            // Start the worker
            new Thread(worker).start();
        }

        try {
            // Important: waits for all workers to finish.
            latch.await();
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        // Compute the average
        double average = (double) sum.get() / (double) N;

        System.out.println("    Sum: " + sum.get());
        System.out.println("Workers: " + N);
        System.out.println("Average: " + average);
    }

}

The output should be something like this:

Starting 39 workers
Adding 94 to sum
Adding 86 to sum
Adding 454 to sum
...
...
...
Adding 358 to sum
Adding 134 to sum
Adding 482 to sum
    Sum: 10133
Workers: 39
Average: 259.8205128205128

Edit: Just for fun, here is an example using ExecutorService, Callable, and Future.

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Random;
import java.util.concurrent.Callable;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Future;
import java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor;

class Worker implements Callable<Integer> {

    @Override
    public Integer call() throws Exception {
        Random random = new Random();

        // Sleep a random length of time, from 5-10s
        Thread.sleep(random.nextInt(5000) + 5000);

        // Compute x
        int x = random.nextInt(500);
        System.out.println("Computed " + x);

        return x;
    }

}

public class Program {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Thread pool size
        final int POOL_SIZE = 10;

        // There will be 39 workers
        final int N = 39;

        System.out.println("Starting " + N + " workers");

        // Create the workers
        Collection<Callable<Integer>> workers = new ArrayList<Callable<Integer>>(N);

        for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) {
            workers.add(new Worker());
        }

        // Create the executor service
        ExecutorService executor = new ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor(POOL_SIZE);

        // Execute all the workers, wait for the results
        List<Future<Integer>> results = null;

        try {
            // Executes all tasks and waits for them to finish
            results = executor.invokeAll(workers);
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            return;
        }

        // Compute the sum from the results
        int sum = 0;

        for (Future<Integer> future : results) {
            try {
                sum += future.get();
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                e.printStackTrace(); return;
            } catch (ExecutionException e) {
                e.printStackTrace(); return;
            }
        }

        // Compute the average
        double average = (double) sum / (double) N;

        System.out.println("         Sum: " + sum);
        System.out.println("     Workers: " + N);
        System.out.println("     Average: " + average);
    }

}

The output should look like this:

Starting 39 workers
Computed 419
Computed 36
Computed 338
...
...
...
Computed 261
Computed 354
Computed 112
         Sum: 9526
     Workers: 39
     Average: 244.25641025641025