Java 5 Concurrency: Selecting Synchronizers

Few of the recent posts described the use of the various constructs provided by Java 5, through the java.util.concurrent package. The next set describes which scenarios can be solved by the use of each of these constructs. I tried to gather the usage scenarios for the various synchronizers available in Java 5 in this post.

• Semaphores: A semaphore is the classic method for restricting access to shared resources in a multi-processing environment. While a synchronized block allows only one thread to access a resource, a semaphore allows multiple threads to access a shared resource. Semaphores are often used to restrict the number of threads than can access some resource.
  • Maintaining multiple connections to a database: Define a semaphore, which has same number of permits as there are connections to the database. If all the permits are used, then a thread requesting a connection will be blocked until another thread releases a permit, when this thread may acquire a permit.
  • Binary semaphore can be used in place of any Lock implementation. Such a implementation has an advantage when recovering from deadlocks, since the lock can be unlocked by another thread.
  • When throughput advantages of non-fair ordering often outweigh fairness considerations. Semphores allow barging behaviour. The tryAcquire() method can be used for barging ahead of other threads, irrespective of fairness settings. The tryAcquire(0, TimeUnit.SECONDS) respects fairness setting.
• Barriers: A synchronization aid that allows a set of threads to all wait for each other to reach a common barrier point. Scenrarios:
  • Joins: When you join a set of threads and start a new set, there may be a need for each thread to save state at the join point. A cyclic barrier may be used for such a scenario.
• Latches: A synchronization aid that allows one or more threads to wait until a set of operations being performed in other threads completes. Usage Scenarios:
  • Divide a problem into N parts, describe each part with a Runnable that executes that portion and counts down on the latch, and queue all the Runnables to an Executor. When all sub-parts are complete, the coordinating thread will be able to pass through await.
  • Latching works well with initialization tasks, where you want no process to run until everything needed is initialized.
• Exchangers: A synchronization point at which two threads can exchange objects, the condition being that the exchanging threads have to be paired up, and a specific data type must be exchanged. Usage Scenarios:
  • An Exchanger is often used when you have two threads, one consuming a resource, and the other producing it. Similar to the producer/consumer problem, but where the buffer can be in one of only two states - empty or full.