Re: wait vs. yield?
On 2010-05-30 14:25:24 -0400, Marcin Rodzik said:
On May 29, 9:42?pm, Eric Sosman <esos...@ieee-dot-org.invalid> wrote:
? ? ?Thread.sleep()
? ? ?Thread.yield()
Both techniques are *vastly* inferior to wait().
So whay does yield() exist? Is there any case in which it can be
preferred?
Anyway, thanks, I really appreciate your answers.
MR
It all eventually makes its way down to the OS's scheduler, which hands
out timeslices to processes and threads.
..sleep(n) says "I'm done with my timeslice, and please don't give me
another one for at least n milliseconds." The OS doesn't even try to
schedule the sleeping thread until requested time has passed.
..yield() says "I'm done with my timeslice, but I still have work to
do." The OS is free to immediately give the thread another timeslice,
or to give some other thread or process the CPU the yielding thread
just gave up.
..wait() says "I'm done with my timeslice. Don't give me another
timeslice until someone calls notify()." As with sleep, the OS won't
even try to schedule your task unless someone calls notify (or one of a
few other wakeup scenarios occurs).
Threads also lose the remainder of their timeslice when they perform
blocking IO and under a few other circumstances. If a thread works
through the entire timeslice, the OS forcibly takes control roughly as
if .yield() had been called, so that other processes can run.
You rarely need yield, but if you have a compute-heavy app with logical
task boundaries, inserting a yield *might* improve system
responsiveness (at the expense of time -- context switches, even just
to the OS and back, aren't free). Measure and test against goals you
care about, as always.
-o