Java™ How to Program, Seventh Edition

23.9. Producer/Consumer Relationship: Bounded Buffers

The program in Section 23.8 uses thread synchronization to guarantee that two threads manipulate data in a shared buffer correctly. However, the application may not perform optimally. If the two threads operate at different speeds, one of the threads will spend more (or most) of its time waiting. For example, in the program in Section 23.8 we shared a single integer variable between the two threads. If the Producer thread produces values faster than the Consumer can consume them, then the Producer thread waits for the Consumer, because there are no other locations in the buffer in which to place the next value. Similarly, if the Consumer consumes values faster than the Producer produces them, ...