THREADS & CONCURRENCY

Lecture 23– CS2110 – Fall 2018

 Prelim room assignments (not yet posted elsewhere)
2

5:30. URHG01: netids lac326 to rzt4

5:30. BKL200: netids sa2229 to zz632

plus all conflicts moving from 7:30 to 5:30 exam

--------------------------------
7:30. URHG01: aa2277 to gyz2

7:30. BKL200: hcm58 to ky356

plus all conflicts moving from 5:30 to 7:30 exam

There will be a homework on concurrency.

 CPU Central Processing Unit. Simplified view
3

The CPU is the part of the

computer that executes
instructions.
Java: x= x + 2;

Suppose variable x is at
Memory location 800,
Instructions at 10
Machine language:
10: load register 1, 800
11: Add register 1, 2 Basic uniprocessor-CPU computer.
12: Store register 1, 800 Black lines indicate data flow, red
lines indicate control flow
From wikipedia
 Part of Activity Monitor in Gries’s laptop
4

>100 processes are competing for time. Here’s some of them:

 Clock rate
5

 Clock rate “frequency at which CPU is running”

Higher the clock rate, the faster instructions
are executed.
 First CPUs: 5-10 Hz
(cycles per second)
 Today MacBook Pro 3.5GHz
 Your OS can control the
clock rate, slow it down when
idle, speed up when more
work to do
 Why multicore?
6

 Moore’s Law: Computer speeds and memory densities

nearly double each year
 But a fast computer runs hot
7

 Power dissipation rises as square of the clock rate

 Chips were heading toward melting down!

 Put more CPUs on a chip:

with four CPUs on one

chip, even if we run each at
half speed we can perform
more overall computations!
 Today: Not one CPU but many
8

Processing Unit is called a core.

 Modern computers have “multiple cores” (processing units)
 Instead of a single CPU (central processing unit) on the chip
5-10 common. Intel has prototypes with 80!

 We often run many programs at the same time

 Even with a single core (processing unit), your program may

have more than one thing “to do” at a time
 Argues for having a way to do many things at once
 Many programs. Each can have several
“threads of execution”
9

We often run many programs at the same time

And each program may have several “threads of execution”
Example, in a Paint program,
when you click the pencil tool, a
new thread of execution is
started to call the method to
process it:
Process pencil
Main GUI thread click
 Programming a Cluster...
10

• Sometimes you want to write a

program that is executed on
many machines!
• Atlas Cluster (at Cornell):
• 768 cores
• 1536 GB RAM
• 24 TB Storage
• 96 NICs (Network Interface
Controller)
 Programming a Cluster...
11

Programs like those that simulate

weather have a big array of
points,

At each step of simulation,

calculates whether at each point
based on info at surrounding
points.
Each is on a separate processor.
 Many processes are executed
simultaneously on your computer
12

• Operating system provides support for multiple

“processes”
• Usually fewer processors than processes
• Processes are an abstraction:
at hardware level, lots of multitasking
–memory subsystem
–video controller
–buses
–instruction prefetching
 Concurrency
13

 Concurrency refers to a single program in which several

processes, called threads, are running simultaneously
 Special problems arise

 They reference the same data and can interfere with each
other, e.g. one process modifies a complex structure like a
heap while another is trying to read it
 CS2110: we focus on two main issues:
 Race conditions

 Deadlock
 Race conditions
14

 A “race condition” arises if two or more processes access the

same variables or objects concurrently and at least one does
updates
 Example: Processes t1 and t2 x= x + 1; for some static
global x.
Process t1 Process t2
… ...
x= x + 1; x= x + 1;

But x= x+1; is not an “atomic action”: it takes several steps

 Race conditions
15

 Suppose x is initially 5

Thread t1 Thread t2

 LOAD x  ...
 LOAD x
 ADD 1  ADD 1
 STORE x
 STORE x

 ... after finishing, x = 6! We “lost” an update

 Race conditions
16

 Typical race condition: two processes wanting to change a

stack at the same time. Or make conflicting changes to a
database at the same time.
 Race conditions are bad news
 Race conditions can cause many kinds of bugs, not just the
example we see here!
 Common cause for “blue screens”: null pointer exceptions,
damaged data structures
 Concurrency makes proving programs correct much harder!
 Deadlock
17

 To prevent race conditions, one often requires a process to

“acquire” resources before accessing them, and only one
process can “acquire” a given resource at a time.
 Examples of resources are:
 A file to be read

 An object that maintains a stack, a linked list, a hash table,

etc.
 But if processes have to acquire two or more resources at the
same time in order to do their work, deadlock can occur. This is
the subject of the next slides.
 Dining philosopher problem Five philosophers
sitting at a table.
18

Each repeatedly
does this:
1. think
2. eat
What do they
eat?
spaghetti.

Need TWO forks

to eat spaghetti!
 Dining philosopher problem Each does
repeatedly :
19
1. think
2. eat (2 forks)
eat is then:
pick up left fork
pick up right fork
pick up food, eat
put down left fork
put down rght fork
At one point,
they all pick up
their left forks

DEADLOCK!
 Dining philosopher problem Simple solution to
deadlock:
20
Number the forks. Pick
up smaller one first
1. think
2. eat (2 forks)
5 4
eat is then:
pick up smaller fork
pick up bigger fork
pick up food, eat
3 put down bigger fork
1
put down smallerfork

2
 Java: What is a Thread?
21

 A separate “execution” that runs within a single program and

can perform a computational task independently and
concurrently with other threads
 Many applications do their work in just a single thread: the one
that called main() at startup
 But there may still be extra threads...

 ... Garbage collection runs in a “background” thread

 GUIs have a separate thread that listens for events and

“dispatches” calls to methods to process them
 Today: learn to create new threads of our own in Java
 Thread
22

 A thread is an object that “independently computes”

 Needs to be created, like any object

 Then “started” --causes some method to be called. It runs

side by side with other threads in the same program; they
see the same global data
 The actual executions could occur on different CPU cores, but
but don’t have to
 We can also simulate threads by multiplexing a smaller
number of cores over a larger number of threads
 Java class Thread
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 threads are instances of class Thread

 Can create many, but they do consume space & time

 The Java Virtual Machine creates the thread that executes

your main method.
 Threads have a priority
 Higher priority threads are executed preferentially

 By default, newly created threads have initial priority equal

to the thread that created it (but priority can be changed)
 Creating a new Thread (Method 1)
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class PrimeThread extends Thread {
long a, b;

PrimeThread(long a, long b) { Call run() directly?

this.a= a; this.b= b; no new thread is used:
} Calling thread will run it
overrides
Thread.run()
@Override public void run() {
//compute primes between a and b
...
}
}

PrimeThread p= new PrimeThread(143, 195);

p.start(); Do this and
Java invokes run() in new thread
 Creating a new Thread (Method 2)
25
class PrimeRun implements Runnable {
long a, b;

PrimeRun(long a, long b) {
this.a= a; this.b= b;
}

public void run() {

//compute primes between a and b
...
}
}

PrimeRun p= new PrimeRun(143, 195);

new Thread(p).start();
 Example Thread name, priority, thread group
Thread[Thread-0,5,main] 0
26
Thread[main,5,main] 0
Thread[main,5,main] 1
Thread[main,5,main] 2
public class ThreadTest extends Thread {
Thread[main,5,main] 3
Thread[main,5,main] 4
public static void main(String[] args) {
Thread[main,5,main] 5
new ThreadTest().start();
Thread[main,5,main] 6
for (int i= 0; i < 10; i++) {
Thread[main,5,main] 7
System.out.format("%s %d\n",
Thread[main,5,main] 8
Thread.currentThread(), i);
Thread[main,5,main] 9
}
Thread[Thread-0,5,main] 1
}
Thread[Thread-0,5,main] 2
Thread[Thread-0,5,main] 3
public void run() {
Thread[Thread-0,5,main] 4
for (int i= 0; i < 10; i++) {
Thread[Thread-0,5,main] 5
System.out.format("%s %d\n",
Thread[Thread-0,5,main] 6
Thread.currentThread(), i);
Thread[Thread-0,5,main] 7
}
Thread[Thread-0,5,main] 8
}
Thread[Thread-0,5,main] 9
}
 Thread name, priority, thread group
Example
27 Thread[main,5,main] 0
Thread[main,5,main] 1
Thread[main,5,main] 2
public class ThreadTest extends Thread { Thread[main,5,main] 3
Thread[main,5,main] 4
public static void main(String[] args) { Thread[main,5,main] 5
new ThreadTest().start(); Thread[main,5,main] 6
for (int i= 0; i < 10; i++) { Thread[main,5,main] 7
System.out.format("%s %d\n", Thread[main,5,main] 8
Thread.currentThread(), i); Thread[main,5,main] 9
} Thread[Thread-0,4,main] 0
} Thread[Thread-0,4,main] 1
Thread[Thread-0,4,main] 2
public void run() { Thread[Thread-0,4,main] 3
currentThread().setPriority(4); Thread[Thread-0,4,main] 4
for (int i= 0; i < 10; i++) { Thread[Thread-0,4,main] 5
System.out.format("%s %d\n", Thread[Thread-0,4,main] 6
Thread.currentThread(), i); Thread[Thread-0,4,main] 7
} Thread[Thread-0,4,main] 8
} Thread[Thread-0,4,main] 9
}
 Thread name, priority, thread group
Example
28 Thread[main,5,main] 0
Thread[main,5,main] 1
public class ThreadTest extends Thread { Thread[main,5,main] 2
Thread[main,5,main] 3
public static void main(String[] args) { Thread[main,5,main] 4
new ThreadTest().start(); Thread[main,5,main] 5
for (int i= 0; i < 10; i++) { Thread[Thread-0,6,main] 0
System.out.format("%s %d\n", Thread[Thread-0,6,main] 1
Thread.currentThread(), i); Thread[Thread-0,6,main] 2
} Thread[Thread-0,6,main] 3
} Thread[Thread-0,6,main] 4
Thread[Thread-0,6,main] 5
public void run() { Thread[Thread-0,6,main] 6
currentThread().setPriority(6); Thread[Thread-0,6,main] 7
for (int i= 0; i < 10; i++) { Thread[Thread-0,6,main] 8
System.out.format("%s %d\n", Thread[Thread-0,6,main] 9
Thread.currentThread(), i); Thread[main,5,main] 6
}}} Thread[main,5,main] 7
Thread[main,5,main] 8
Thread[main,5,main] 9
 Example
waiting...
29 running...
waiting...
public class ThreadTest extends Thread { running...
static boolean ok = true; waiting...
running...
public static void main(String[] args) { waiting...
new ThreadTest().start(); running...
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { waiting...
System.out.println("waiting..."); running...
yield(); waiting...
}
ok = false; If threads happen to running...
be sharing
waiting...
} a CPU, yield allows other waiting
running...
threads to run.
waiting...
public void run() { running...
while (ok) { waiting...
System.out.println("running..."); running...
yield(); waiting...
} running...
System.out.println("done"); done
}
}
 Terminating Threads is tricky
30

 Easily done... but only in certain ways

 Safe way to terminate a thread: return from method run

 Thread throws uncaught exception? whole program will be

halted (but it can take a second or two ... )
 Some old APIs have issues: stop(), interrupt(), suspend(),
destroy(), etc.
 Issue: Can easily leave application in a “broken” internal
state.
 Many applications have some kind of variable telling the
thread to stop itself.
 Threads can pause
31

 When active, a thread is “runnable”.

 It may not actually be “running”. For that, a CPU must
schedule it. Higher priority threads could run first.
 A thread can pause
 Call Thread.sleep(k) to sleep for k milliseconds

 Doing I/O (e.g. read file, wait for mouse input, open file)
can cause thread to pause
 Java has a form of locks associated with objects. When
threads lock an object, one succeeds at a time.
 Background (daemon) Threads
32

 In many applications we have a notion of “foreground” and

“background” (daemon) threads
 Foreground threads are doing visible work, like interacting
with the user or updating the display
 Background threads do things like maintaining data
structures (rebalancing trees, garbage collection, etc.)

 On your computer, the same notion of background workers

explains why so many things are always running in the task
manager.
 Fancier forms of locking
33

 Java developers have created various synchronization abstract

data types
 Semaphores: a kind of synchronized counter (invented by
Dijkstra)
 Event-driven synchronization

 The Windows and Linux and Apple O/S have kernel locking
features, like file locking

 But for Java, synchronized is the core mechanism

 Summary
34

 Use of multiple processes and multiple threads within each

process can exploit concurrency
 Which may be real (multicore) or “virtual” (an illusion)
 When using threads, beware!

 Synchronize any shared memory to avoid race conditions

 Synchronize objects in certain order to avoid deadlocks
 Even with proper synchronization, concurrent programs
can have other problems such as “livelock”
 Serious treatment of concurrency is a complex topic
(covered in more detail in cs3410 and cs4410)