22/04/2023, 09:53 Introduction - Java Multithreading for Senior Engineering Interviews

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Introduction
This lesson details the reasons why threads exist and what benefit do they provide. We also discuss
the problems that come with threads.

We'll cover the following

• What good is concurrency?

• Benefits of Threads
• Performance Gains via Multi-Threading
• Problems with Threads

What good is concurrency?

Understanding of how threading works and knowledge of concurrent programming principles exhibit
maturity and technical depth of a candidate and can be an important differentiator in landing a higher
leveling offer at a company. First, we have to understand why threading models exist and what good do they
provide?

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Threads like most computer science concepts aren't physical objects. The closest tangible manifestation of
threads can be seen in a debugger. The screen-shot below, shows the threads of our program suspended in the
debugger.

Suspended threads in a debugger

The simplest example to think of a concurrent system is a single-processor machine running your favorite
IDE. Say you edit one of your code files and click save, that clicking of the button will initiate a workflow
which will cause bytes to be written out to the underlying physical disk. However, IO is an expensive
operation, and the CPU will be idle while bytes are being written out to the disk.

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Whilst IO takes place, the idle CPU could work on something useful and here is where threads come in - the IO
thread is switched out and the UI thread gets scheduled on the CPU so that if you click elsewhere on the
screen, your IDE is still responsive and does not appear hung or frozen.

Threads can give the illusion of multitasking even though at any given point in time the CPU is executing only
one thread. Each thread gets a slice of time on the CPU and then gets switched out either because it initiates a
task which requires waiting and not utilizing the CPU or it completes its time slot on the CPU. There are much
more nuances and intricacies on how thread scheduling works but what we just described, forms the basis of
it.

With advances in hardware technology, it is now common to have multi-core machines. Applications can take
advantage of these architectures and have a dedicated CPU run each thread.

Benefits of Threads
1. Higher throughput, though in some pathetic scenarios it is possible to have the overhead of context
switching among threads steal away any throughput gains and result in worse performance than a
single-threaded scenario. However such cases are unlikely and an exception, rather than the norm.

2. Responsive applications that give the illusion of multi-tasking.

3. Efficient utilization of resources. Note that thread creation is light-weight in comparison to spawning a
brand new process. Web servers that use threads instead of creating new processes when fielding web
requests, consume far fewer resources.

All other benefits of multi-threading are extensions of or indirect benefits of the above.

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22/04/2023, 09:53 Introduction - Java Multithreading for Senior Engineering Interviews

Performance Gains via Multi-Threading

As a concrete example, consider the example code below. The task is to compute the sum of all the integers
from 0 to Integer.MAX_VALUE. In the first scenario, we have a single thread doing the summation while in the
second scenario we split the range into two parts and have one thread sum for each range. In the end, we add
the two half sums to get the combined sum. We measure the time taken for each scenario and print it.

42
43 t1.join();
44 t2.join();
45
46 long finalCount = s1.counter + s2.counter;
47 long end = System.currentTimeMillis();
48 System.out.println("Two threads final count = " + finalCount + " took " + (end - start));
49 }
50
51 static public void oneThread() {
52
53 long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
54 SumUpExample s = new SumUpExample(1, MAX_NUM );
55 s.add();
56 long end = System.currentTimeMillis();
57 System.out.println("Single thread final count = " + s.counter + " took " + (end - start));
58 }
59
60
61 public static void runTest() throws InterruptedException {
62
63 oneThread();
64 twoThreads();
65
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66 }
67 }
68
69

Run Save Reset

In my run, I see the two threads scenario run within 652 milliseconds whereas the single thread scenario
runs in 886 milliseconds. You may observe different numbers but the time taken by two threads would
always be less than the time taken by a single thread. The performance gains can be many folds depending on
the availability of multiple CPUs and the nature of the problem being solved. However, there will always be
problems that don't yield well to a multi-threaded approach and may very well be solved efficiently using a
single thread.

Problems with Threads

However, as it is said, there's no free lunch in life. The premium for using threads manifests in the following
forms:

1. Usually very hard to find bugs, some that may only rear head in production environments
2. Higher cost of code maintenance since the code inherently becomes harder to reason about
3. Increased utilization of system resources. Creation of each thread consumes additional memory, CPU
cycles for book-keeping and waste of time in context switches.
4. Programs may experience slowdown as coordination amongst threads comes at a price. Acquiring and
releasing locks adds to program execution time. Threads fighting over acquiring locks cause lock

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contention.

With this backdrop lets delve into more details of concurrent programming about which you are likely to be
quizzed in an interview.

Next

Program vs Process vs Thread

Mark as Completed

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