Threadpool design suggestions

From:
Faisal <faisalm83@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.vc.mfc
Date:
Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:44:39 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<c711d5ad-eb45-4120-8c87-84f5bc1825fe@a5g2000pre.googlegroups.com>
In my application a number of tasks have to be executed parallely.
Since this number is very high we are maintaining a thread pool.The
basic idea is taken from CLR's thread pool documentations.

The major classes in this framework are

CSequencer : This class wraps a thread. In this a thread is created
and its wait for multiple objects m_hReadyToRunEvent and m_hStop. When
m_hReadyToRunEvent event is set the Sequencer executes the task
assigned to it.

Thread fn of sequencer is given below

DWORD WINAPI CCVSequencer::ExecuteThread( LPVOID lpParam )
{
        CCVSequencer* pThis = (CCVSequencer*)lpParam;
        while( 1 )
        {
                HANDLE hEvnts[] = { pThis->m_hReadyToRunEvent,
                                    pThis->m_hStopEvent };

                DWORD dwWaitFor = INFINITE;

                if( pThis->m_bAutoDestroy )
                        dwWaitFor = 2 * 60 * 1000;

                switch( WaitForMultipleObjects( 2, hEvnts, false,
dwWaitFor ) )
                {
                        case WAIT_OBJECT_0 + 0:
                        {
                                pThis->Sequence();
                                m_pScheduler->AddSequencer( this );
                                break;
                        }

                        case WAIT_OBJECT_0 + 1:
                        {
                                return 0;
                        }

                        case WAIT_TIMEOUT:
                        {
                                m_bShuttingDown = true;
                                m_pScheduler->RemoveSequencer( this );
                                break;
                        }
                }
        }

        return 0;

}

CScheduler: This class handles the thread request. For it maintains a
thread and two lists( m_lstFreeSequencers,m_lstTasks).
m_lstFreeSequencers contains the list of sequencers that
are waiting to get some task.
m_lstTaskList contains the tasks posted.

Whenever a tasks is posted to scheduler, it checks
m_lstFreeSequencers. If the m_lstFreeSequencers is empty,it creates a
new sequencer and add this to m_lstFreeSequencers.

Then it removes a sequencer from m_lstFreeSequencers, the task is
assigned to this retrieved sequencer and sets m_hReadyToRunEvent of
the sequencer. Once the operation is over sequencer informs the
scheduler to add it to m_lstFreeSequencers.

Problem: As you seen in the CCVSequencer::ExecuteThread() if a thread
get no task in 2 minutes it shutdowns automatically . For this it
informs the scheduler to remove it from m_lstFreeSequencer list. But
in some case between the time-out and m_bShuttingDown = true
statements scheduler assigns this thread for another task.
ie, a thread going to shutting down is assigned to a task.

How best can I avoid this problem?

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