Java Threads, Second Edition

Chapter 9. Parallelizing for Multiprocessor Machines

So far in this book, we’ve examined threading as a programming technique that allows us to simplify programming: we have used threading to achieve asynchronous behavior or to perform independent tasks. Although we discussed how threads are scheduled on machines with multiple processors, by and large the techniques that we’ve shown so far are not affected by a machine with multiple processors, nor do they exploit the number of processors on a machine to make the program run faster.

Multithreaded applications have a special bond with multiprocessor systems. The separation of threads provides a clear and simple separation for the multiprocessor machine. Since the operating system can place different threads on different processors, the application will run faster.

In this chapter, we’ll look at how to parallelize Java programs so that they will run faster on a machine with multiple CPUs. The processes that we’ll examine are beneficial not only to newly developed Java programs, but also to existing Java programs that have a CPU-intensive loop, allowing us to improve the performance of those programs on a multiprocessor system.

How does the Java threading system behave in a multiprocessor system? There are no conceptual differences between a program running on a machine with one processor and a machine with two or more processors; the threads behave exactly the same in either case. However, as we discussed in Chapter 6, the key ...