Re: concurrency, threads and objects

From:
Tom Forsmo <spam@nospam.net>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Mon, 27 Nov 2006 02:27:36 +0100
Message-ID:
<456a3eea$1@news.broadpark.no>
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Robert Klemme wrote:

On 16.11.2006 18:45, Tom Forsmo wrote:

As far as I understand it. On Windows processes are expensive while
threads are cheap. On linux processes are cheap and threads are
extremely cheap.


Yep, threads on modern systems are very cheap. I once cooked up a small
program (attached) to collect thread stats.


I ran you program on my machine in both windows and linux and discovered
some interesting results:

The machine is a dual boot Thinkpad T60 with intel dual core. no special
systems/kernel optimisations has been performed on either systems.

linux: vanilla linux 2.6.17.8 kernel release running on Mandriva 2006
windows: factory installed windows xp with SP 2 (version 2002)

tf - linux:

max t11 - start time in thread: 55
avg t11 - start time in thread: 0.16632
max t2 - creation time : 42
avg t2 - creation time : 0.02114
max t3 - start time in main : 42
avg t3 - start time in main : 0.09306

max t11 - start time in thread: 65
avg t11 - start time in thread: 0.15874
max t2 - creation time : 15
avg t2 - creation time : 0.01887
max t3 - start time in main : 15
avg t3 - start time in main : 0.09395

tf - windows:

max t11 - start time in thread: 78
avg t11 - start time in thread: 0.66997
max t2 - creation time : 78
avg t2 - creation time : 0.14944
max t3 - start time in main : 63
avg t3 - start time in main : 0.27753

max t11 - start time in thread: 47
avg t11 - start time in thread: 0.73756
max t2 - creation time : 47
avg t2 - creation time : 0.14407
max t3 - start time in main : 47
avg t3 - start time in main : 0.29903

Conclusion: linux is faster.

I also tested a thread efficiency program I made, its a udp server and
client.

server: -t 1000 (number of threads: 1000)
client: -t 500 -r 10000 (number of threads 500,
                           number of requests per thread: 10000)

tf - linux

Average creation time for client object: 0.00462ms
Time executing threads: 183114ms (183.114s)
Average creation time for client object: 0.00426ms
Time executing threads: 182486ms (182.486s)

tf - windows

Average creation time for client object: 0.00359ms
Time executing threads: 535891ms (535.891s)
Average creation time for client object: 0.00296ms
Time executing threads: 536219ms (536.219s)

conclusion: windows is faster at creating client objects by a little
bit, but linux is 3 times faster at executing the actual operations.

I did another test with this code also:

in the server there is a sleep() call to simulate db access, I
experimented a bit with what values it could hold and how it would
affect the total performance. I found out that the performance
increasement is proportional to the sleep time decreasement, and that
all values down to 1ms (since it is the lowest value for the call I
made) affected performance. But for windows the story was completely
different, why that is I dont know. In windows any values below
100-110ms was rounded up to approx 100ms. So I could not get any
performance increase with values below 100ms. Also there was a strange
spike at the 1ms and 2ms tests (it might have something to do with
kernel context switching thresholds)

Here are the measurements:

tf - windows:

1ms:
E:\threads_perf>java -cp . tf.StatelessUdpClient -t 500 -r 10000
Time executing threads: 453875ms (453.875s)
Time executing threads: 483859ms (483.859s)

2ms:
Time executing threads: 656609ms (656.609s)
Time executing threads: 684734ms (684.734s)

4ms:
Time executing threads: 572547ms (572.547s)
Time executing threads: 604500ms (587.5s)

30ms:
Time executing threads: 578796ms (578.796s)
Time executing threads: 555860ms (555.86s)

100ms:
Time executing threads: 571079ms (571.079s)
Time executing threads: 593531ms (593.531s)

120ms:
Time executing threads: 632657ms (632.657s)
Time executing threads: 639125ms (639.125s)

150ms:
Time executing threads: 773750ms (773.75s)
Time executing threads: 771406ms (771.406s)

200ms:
Time executing threads: 1019234ms (1019.234s)
Time executing threads: 1021328ms (1021.328s)

500ms:
Time executing threads: 2543078ms (2543.078s)
Time executing threads: 2544656ms (2544.656s)

The code is attached.

tom

--------------000905050200090906090608
Content-Type: text/x-java;
 name="StatelessUdpClient.java"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline;
 filename="StatelessUdpClient.java"

package tf;

import java.util.Random;
import java.net.DatagramSocket;
import java.net.DatagramPacket;
import java.net.Socket;
import java.net.InetAddress;
import java.net.SocketTimeoutException;

public class StatelessUdpClient {

    public static class StatelessUdpTestClient extends Thread {

        private int requestsPerThread = 100;
        private int port = 3000;

        public StatelessUdpTestClient(int requests) {
            this.requestsPerThread = requests;
        }

        public void run() {

            Random rand = new Random();
            int requests = requestsPerThread;

            try {
                DatagramSocket s = new DatagramSocket();
                s.setSoTimeout(3000);

                int len = 1024;
                byte[] buf;
                byte[] buf2 = new byte[len];
                String status;
                boolean reExec = false;

                while(requests-- > 0) {

                    int val = rand.nextInt(1000000000);
                    String str = new String(Integer.toString(val));

                    buf = str.getBytes();
                    DatagramPacket p = new DatagramPacket(buf, buf.length, InetAddress.getByName("localhost"), port);
                    s.send(p);

                    DatagramPacket p2 = new DatagramPacket(buf2, len);
                    try {
                        s.receive(p2);
                    } catch (SocketTimeoutException soe) {
                        reExec = true;
                    }

                    if(reExec) {
                        reExec = false;
                        // System.out.println("Request timeout, restarting request " + requests);
                        continue;
                    }

                    int ret_val = Integer.parseInt( new String(p2.getData(), 0, p2.getLength()) );
                    int new_val = val + 1;

                    if (new_val != ret_val) {
                        System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getName() +
                                         " - sent value: " + val + " - return value: " + ret_val +
                                         " new value: " + new_val + " *** FAILED ***");
                    }
                }

            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }

    public static void exec(int threads, int requests) throws Exception {

        long average = 0;
        int c = 100000;
        StatelessUdpTestClient client = null;

        for (int i=0; i<c; i++) {
            long t1 = System.currentTimeMillis();
            client = new StatelessUdpTestClient(requests);
            long t2 = System.currentTimeMillis();
            average += t2 - t1;
        }

        System.out.println("Average creation time for client object: " + (((double) average) / c) + "ms" );

        client = new StatelessUdpTestClient(requests);
        Thread[] thr = new Thread[threads];
        long t3 = System.currentTimeMillis();

        try {
            for(int i=0; i<threads; i++) {
                thr[i] = new Thread(client);
                thr[i].start();
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        for ( Thread t : thr ) {
            try {
                t.join();
            }
            catch ( InterruptedException e ) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }

        long t4 = System.currentTimeMillis();
        long threadTime = (t4 - t3);
        System.out.println("Time executing threads: " + threadTime + "ms (" + (((double) threadTime) / 1000) + "s)");
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

        int threads = 10;
        int requests = 10;

        for(int i=0; i< args.length; i++) {

            String s = args[i];

            if (s.equalsIgnoreCase("-t")) {
                threads = Integer.valueOf(args[++i]);
            }

            if (s.equalsIgnoreCase("-r")) {
                requests = Integer.valueOf(args[++i]);
            }

        }

        StatelessUdpClient.exec(threads, requests);
        StatelessUdpClient.exec(threads, requests);
    }
}

--------------000905050200090906090608
Content-Type: text/x-java;
 name="StatelessUdpWorker.java"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline;
 filename="StatelessUdpWorker.java"

package tf;

import java.util.Random;
import java.net.DatagramSocket;
import java.net.DatagramPacket;

public class StatelessUdpWorker {

    public static class StatelessUdpServer extends Thread {

        private DatagramSocket s = null;

        {
            try {
                s = new DatagramSocket(3000);
            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }

        public void run() {

            Random rand = new Random();

            try {
                int len = 8196;
                byte[] buf = new byte[len];

                while(true) {
                    DatagramPacket p = new DatagramPacket(buf, len);
                    s.receive(p);
                    int plen = p.getLength();
                    String str = new String(p.getData(), 0, plen);
                    int val = Integer.parseInt(str);
                    val++;

                    /* Imitating talking to an external source with thread blocking. */
                    sleep(rand.nextInt(2));

                    String str2 = new String(Integer.toString(val));
                    byte[] buf2 = str2.getBytes();
                    DatagramPacket p2 = new DatagramPacket(buf2, buf2.length, p.getAddress(), p.getPort());
                    s.send(p2);
                }

            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }

    public static void execSingle(int threads) {

        StatelessUdpServer wrk = new StatelessUdpServer();

        try {

            for(int i=0; i<threads; i++) {
                new Thread(wrk).start();
            }

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        System.out.println("Finished starting threads");
    }

    public static void execMultiple(int threads) {

        try {

            for(int i=0; i<threads; i++) {
                new StatelessUdpServer().start();
            }

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        int threads = 10;

        for(int i=0; i< args.length; i++) {

            String s = args[i];

            if (s.equalsIgnoreCase("-t")) {
                threads = Integer.valueOf(args[++i]);
            }
        }

        StatelessUdpWorker.execSingle(threads);
        // StatelessUdpWorker.execMultiple(threads);

    }
}

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Content-Type: text/x-java;
 name="ThreadCreationOverhead.java"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline;
 filename="ThreadCreationOverhead.java"

package klemme;

import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Vector;

public class ThreadCreationOverhead {

    private static final int THREADS = 100000;

    private static class Maximizer {
        private long max = 0;
        private long sum = 0;
        private int count = 0;

        public synchronized void update( long n ) {
            if ( n > max ) {
                max = n;
            }

            sum += n;
            ++count;
        }

        public synchronized long getMax() {
            return max;
        }

        public synchronized double getAvg() {
            return ( ( double ) sum ) / count;
        }
    }

    private static void print( String msg ) {
        // System.out.println( Thread.currentThread().getName() + ": " + msg );
    }

    private static void testRun() {
        final Maximizer mt11 = new Maximizer();
        final Maximizer mt2 = new Maximizer();
        final Maximizer mt3 = new Maximizer();

        List<Thread> threads = new Vector<Thread>();

        for ( int i = 0; i < THREADS; ++i ) {
// System.out.println( "Run " + i );
            final long t1 = System.currentTimeMillis();
            Thread th = new Thread(
                new Runnable() {
                    public void run() {
                        long t11 = System.currentTimeMillis() - t1;
                        mt11.update( t11 );
                        print( "in thread: " + t11 );
                    }
                } );
            long t2 = System.currentTimeMillis() - t1;
            th.start();
            long t3 = System.currentTimeMillis() - t1;
            mt2.update( t2 );
            print( "after creation: " + t2 );
            mt3.update( t3 );
            print( "after start: " + t3 );
// System.out.println();

            threads.add( th );
        }

        for ( Iterator iter = threads.iterator(); iter.hasNext(); ) {
            Thread th = ( Thread ) iter.next();
            try {
                th.join();
            }
            catch ( InterruptedException e ) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }

        System.out.println( "max t11 - start time in thread: " + mt11.getMax() );
        System.out.println( "avg t11 - start time in thread: " + mt11.getAvg() );
        System.out.println( "max t2 - creation time : " + mt2.getMax() );
        System.out.println( "avg t2 - creation time : " + mt2.getAvg() );
        System.out.println( "max t3 - start time in main : " + mt3.getMax() );
        System.out.println( "avg t3 - start time in main : " + mt3.getAvg() );
    }

    public static void main( String[] args ) {
        testRun();
        System.out.println();
        testRun();
    }
}

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