Develop Reference

Can I trust that System.nanoTime() will return different value each invocation?

My program needs to generate unique labels that consist of a tag, date and time. Something like this:
"myTag__2019_09_05__07_51"
If one tries to generate two labels with the same tag in the same minute, one will receive equal labels, what I cannot allow. I think of adding as an additional suffix result of System.nanoTime() to make sure that each label will be unique (I cannot access all labels previously generated to look for duplicates):
"myTag__2019_09_05__07_51__{System.nanoTime() result}"
Can I trust that each invocation of System.nanoTime() this will produce a different value? I tested it like this on my laptop:
assertNotEquals(System.nanoTime(), System.nanoTime())
and this works. I wonder if I have a guarantee that it will always work.

TLDR; If you only use a single thread on a popular VM on a modern operating system, it may work in practice. But many serious applications use multiple threads and multiple instances of the application, and there won't be any guarantee in that case.
The only guarantee given in the Javadoc for System.nanoTime() is that the resolution of the clock is at least as good as System.currentTimeMillis() - so if you are writing cross-platform code, there is clearly no expectation that the results of nanoTime are unique, as you can call nanoTime() many times per millisecond.
On my OS (Java 11, MacOS) I always get at least one nanosecond difference between successive calls on the same thread (and that is after Integer.MAX_VALUE looks at successive return values); it's possible that there is something in the implementation that guarantees it.
However it is simple to generate duplicate results if you use multiple Threads and have more than 1 physical CPU. Here's code that will show you:
public class UniqueNano {
private static volatile long a = -1, b = -2;
public static void main(String[] args) {
long max = 1_000_000;
new Thread(() -> {
for (int i = 0; i < max; i++) { a = System.nanoTime(); }
}).start();
new Thread(() -> {
for (int i = 0; i < max; i++) { b = System.nanoTime(); }
}).start();
for (int i = 0; i < max; i++) {
if (a == b) {
System.out.println("nanoTime not unique");
}
}
}
}
Also, when you scale your application to multiple machines, you will potentially have the same problem.
Relying on System.nanoTime() to get unique values is not a good idea.

Stop the running threads from an array

I have an array of threads and I want to start a few of them. The point is that I want to stop the threads with in a for loop.
In the for loop I want to check all threads if they are running or not, and if they are, I want to be asked if I want stop them(dialog box yes/no).
The problem is that the loop doesn't display all the times all three dialog boxes for all those three started thread. Sometime appear 1 dialog box, sometime 3 dialog boxes etc.
So, I do not have the chance to stop all three threads...
public class Main {
public static void main( String[] args )
{
Counter[] arrayOfThreads = new Counter[10];
for( int i = 0; i < arrayOfThreads.length; i++ )
{
arrayOfThreads[i] = new Counter( );
}
arrayOfThreads[3].start( );
arrayOfThreads[5].start( );
arrayOfThreads[2].start( );
for( int i = 0; i < arrayOfThreads.length; i++ )
{
if( arrayOfThreads[i].getState( ) == State.RUNNABLE )
{
int dialogButton = JOptionPane.YES_NO_OPTION;
int dialogResult = JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog( null, "Do you want to stop the theread: " + i, "Warning", dialogButton );
if( dialogResult == JOptionPane.YES_OPTION )
{
arrayOfThreads[i].stopProcessing( );
}
}
}
}
}
class Counter extends Thread
{
volatile boolean processing;
public void run( )
{
int i = 0;
processing = true;
while( processing )
{
System.out.println( " Number: " + i );
i++;
}
System.out.println( "finish" );
}
public void stopProcessing( )
{
processing = false;
}
}
EDIT:
So all what I want is when I press the EXIT button to close the threads and to dispose the frame if all the threads are stoped. I modified the first class to more more clear.
public class Program extends Frame {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Counter[] arrayOfThreads = new Counter[10];
for (int i = 0; i < arrayOfThreads.length; i++) {
arrayOfThreads[i] = new Counter();
}
Program program = new Program(arrayOfThreads);
program.startThreeThreads(1, 4, 5);
}
private Counter[] arrayOfThreads;
private JButton stopThreads;
public Program(Counter[] arrayOfThreads) {
this.arrayOfThreads = arrayOfThreads;
stopThreads = new JButton("STOP THREADS");
closeThreadsWhenExitIsPressed();
setSize(300, 200);
setLayout(new FlowLayout());
add(stopThreads);
setVisible(true);
}
public void closeThreadsWhenExitIsPressed() {
stopThreads.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
#Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
stopRunningThreadsMethod();
dispose();
}
});
}
private void startThreeThreads(int first, int second, int third) {
for (int i = 0; i < arrayOfThreads.length; i++) {
if (i == first || i == second || i == third) {
arrayOfThreads[i].start();
continue;
}
}
}
public void stopRunningThreadsMethod() {
for (int i = 0; i < arrayOfThreads.length; i++) {
if (arrayOfThreads[i].isAlive()) {
int dialogButton = JOptionPane.YES_NO_OPTION;
int dialogResult = JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog(null, "Do you want to stop the theread: " + i,
"Warning", dialogButton);
if (dialogResult == JOptionPane.YES_OPTION) {
arrayOfThreads[i].stopProcessing();
}
}
}
}
}

The documentation for getState() is (my emphasis):
Returns the state of this thread. This method is designed for use in
monitoring of the system state, not for synchronization control.
You're trying to use it for synchronization so you're already outside recommendation.
If you look at Thread.State you'll see it isn't always RUNNABLE and I suspect, as is common, System.out is synchronized so although not obvious from your code the thread could be WAITING (on another competing thread to use System.out).
Given all your thread does is hammer output it's probably quite common one or more is waiting. You could even find none show the dialog because as you go round the loop you happen to coincide with that thread waiting!
Check this by reading the state and outputting it!
So first, don't use getState() for synchronization and be aware you don't always know what synchronization is going on 'behind the scenes' in libraries you're using.
The documentation gives leave for the implementer to maybe cut corners in low-level synchronization of getState() and the value may not be 'first class' reliable (synchronized), but regardless don't do things you're told not to even if you don't know why!
The right method is isAlive(). The thread is alive if it has had its start() method called and not yet terminated. Waiting or not, it's alive...
Next problem, is because you set processing=true; in the run() method you could call stopProcessing() before processing has been set true.
There is no guarantee how far (if anywhere) down run() the thread has got when you reach stopProcessing() in the main thread.
I know there's a user interaction (e.g. big delay) but on an overloaded (or single threaded!) machine or a future use case it is possible for processing=true; to be executed after stopProcessing() sets it false. That may lead to 'runaway' processing.
So use volatile boolean processing=true; in the class declaration or set it in the constructor. That guarantees it will be set by the end of the constructor (takes place in the controlling thread) and must be before stopProcessing() is called.
Your application is (of course) a toy but think about when you would stop the threads the user didn't stop.
It's bad practice to just end the JVM without bringing all threads to a safe conclusion.
That doesn't matter in your toy but in real applications you may want to release external resources and (say) flush file buffers rather than let the JVM pull the run out.
That is, finally call stopProcessing() on all the threads in one loop and then join() in a second loop before ending the application.
It's important to use two loops because it makes sure the threads are all stopping concurrently and not one after the other.
I can't emphasise enough why you should end threads properly. People often ignore me and then long into to development have weird glitches that difficult to localise and hard to drive out.
Other considerations:
Consider using interrupt(). It's designed to help terminate threads and does nice things for you like jump them out of sleep and wait conditions (with an Interrupted exception). That will mean they may terminate faster (never slower) than your approach.
Again, not relevant in a toy but valuable in serious application.
Consider sub-classing Runnable instead of Thread. Again your toy is fine and valid but again 'real' applications end up preferring Runnable and using a thread pool of some kind (e.g. ExecutorService). That's clever because on many platforms the overhead of creating and destroying Threads is far larger than a lighter-weight Runnable.
That's the standard advice but I don't think its wisdom is always explained.

The threads probably haven't started by the time you enter the loop in main. Their states are Thread.State.NEW when you check arrayOfThreads[i].getState().
A simple solution would be either to wait some time before executing the loop to make sure the threads are running or to run a while loop over your loop to check the condition more than once.
Both are spotty and inefficient because you don't know exactly when the thread will be up and running. Instead, I would advise implementing a wait-notify mechanism to show a dialogue when the thread is certainly running.

(Thread pools in Java) Increasing number of threads creates slow down for simple for loop. Why?

I've got a little bit of work that is easily parallelizable, and I want to use Java threads to split up the work across my four core machine. It's a genetic algorithm applied to the traveling salesman problem. It doesn't sound easily parallelizable, but the first loop is very easily so. The second part where I talk about the actual evolution may or may not be, but I want to know if I'm getting slow down because of the way I'm implementing threading, or if its the algorithm itself.
Also, if anyone has better ideas on how I should be implementing what I'm trying to do, that would be very much appreciated.
In main(), I have this:
final ArrayBlockingQueue<Runnable> queue = new ArrayBlockingQueue<Runnable>(numThreads*numIter);
ThreadPoolExecutor tpool = new ThreadPoolExecutor(numThreads, numThreads, 10, TimeUnit.SECONDS, queue);
barrier = new CyclicBarrier(numThreads);
k.init(tpool);
I have a loop that is done inside of init() and looks like this:
for (int i = 0; i < numCities; i++) {
x[i] = rand.nextInt(width);
y[i] = rand.nextInt(height);
}
That I changed to this:
int errorCities = 0, stepCities = 0;
stepCities = numCities/numThreads;
errorCities = numCities - stepCities*numThreads;
// Split up work, assign to threads
for (int i = 1; i <= numThreads; i++) {
int startCities = (i-1)*stepCities;
int endCities = startCities + stepCities;
// This is a bit messy...
if(i <= numThreads) endCities += errorCities;
tpool.execute(new citySetupThread(startCities, endCities));
}
And here is citySetupThread() class:
public class citySetupThread implements Runnable {
int start, end;
public citySetupThread(int s, int e) {
start = s;
end = e;
}
public void run() {
for (int j = start; j < end; j++) {
x[j] = ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(0, width);
y[j] = ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(0, height);
}
try {
barrier.await();
} catch (InterruptedException ie) {
return;
} catch (BrokenBarrierException bbe) {
return;
}
}
}
The above code is run once in the program, so it was sort of a test case for my threading constructs (this is my first experience with Java threads). I implemented the same sort of thing in a real critical section, specifically the evolution part of the genetic algorithm, whose class is as follows:
public class evolveThread implements Runnable {
int start, end;
public evolveThread(int s, int e) {
start = s;
end = e;
}
public void run() {
// Get midpoint
int n = population.length/2, m;
for (m = start; m > end; m--) {
int i, j;
i = ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(0, n);
do {
j = ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(0, n);
} while(i == j);
population[m].crossover(population[i], population[j]);
population[m].mutate(numCities);
}
try {
barrier.await();
} catch (InterruptedException ie) {
return;
} catch (BrokenBarrierException bbe) {
return;
}
}
}
Which exists in a function evolve() that is called in init() like so:
for (int p = 0; p < numIter; p++) evolve(p, tpool);
Yes I know that's not terribly good design, but for other reasons I'm stuck with it. Inside of evolve is the relevant parts, shown here:
// Threaded inner loop
int startEvolve = popSize - 1,
endEvolve = (popSize - 1) - (popSize - 1)/numThreads;
// Split up work, assign to threads
for (int i = 0; i < numThreads; i++) {
endEvolve = (popSize - 1) - (popSize - 1)*(i + 1)/numThreads + 1;
tpool.execute(new evolveThread(startEvolve, endEvolve));
startEvolve = endEvolve;
}
// Wait for our comrades
try {
barrier.await();
} catch (InterruptedException ie) {
return;
} catch (BrokenBarrierException bbe) {
return;
}
population[1].crossover(population[0], population[1]);
population[1].mutate(numCities);
population[0].mutate(numCities);
// Pick out the strongest
Arrays.sort(population, population[0]);
current = population[0];
generation++;
What I really want to know is this:
What role does the "queue" have? Am I right to create a queue for as many jobs as I think will be executed for all threads in the pool? If the size isn't sufficiently large, I get RejectedExecutionException's. I just decided to do numThreads*numIterations because that's how many jobs there would be (for the actual evolution method that I mentioned earlier). It's weird though.. I shouldn't have to do this if the barrier.await()'s were working, which leads me to...
Am I using the barrier.await() correctly? Currently I have it in two places: inside the run() method for the Runnable object, and after the for loop that executes all the jobs. I would've thought only one would be required, but I get errors if I remove one or the other.
I'm suspicious of contention for the threads, as that is the only thing I can glean from the absurd slowdown (which does scale with the input parameters). I want to know if it is anything to do with how I'm implementing the thread pool and barriers. If not, then I'll have to look inside the crossover() and mutate() methods, I suppose.

First, I think you may have a bug with how you intended to use the CyclicBarrier. Currently you are initializing it with the number of executor threads as the number of parties. You have an additional party, however; the main thread. So I think you need to do:
barrier = new CyclicBarrier(numThreads + 1);
I think this should work, but personally I find it an odd use of the barrier.
When using a worker-queue thread-pool model I find it easier to use a Semaphore or Java's Future model.
For a semaphore:
class MyRunnable implements Runnable {
private final Semaphore sem;
public MyRunnable(Semaphore sem) {
this.sem = sem;
}
public void run() {
// do work
// signal complete
sem.release()
}
}
Then in your main thread:
Semaphore sem = new Semaphore(0);
for (int i = 0; i < numJobs; ++i) {
threadPool.execute(new MyRunnable(sem));
}
sem.acquire(numJobs);
Its really doing the same thing as the barrier, but I find it easier to think about the worker tasks "signaling" that they are done instead of "sync'ing up" with the main thread again.
For example, if you look at the example code in the CyclicBarrier JavaDoc the call to barrier.await() is inside the loop inside the worker. So it is really synching up the multiple long running worker threads and the main thread is not participating in the barrier. Calling barrier.await() at the end of the worker outside the loop is more signaling completion.

As you increase the number of tasks, you increase the overhead using each task adds. This means you want to minimise the number of tasks i.e. the same as the number of cpus you have. For some tasks using double the number of cpus can be better when the work load is not even.
BTW: You don't need a barrier in each task, you can wait for the future of each task to complete by calling get() on each one.

Java strange performance inconsistency

I have a simple recursive method, a depth first search. On each call, it checks if it's in a leaf, otherwise it expands the current node and calls itself on the children.
I'm trying to make it parallel, but I notice the following strange (for me) problem.
I measure execution time with System.currentTimeMillis().
When I break the search into a number of subsearches and add the total execution time, I get a bigger number than the sequential search. I only measure execution time, no communication or sync, etc. I would expect to get the same time when I add the times of the subtasks. This happens even if I just run one task after the other, so without threads. If I just break the search into some subtasks and run the subtasks one after the other, I get a bigger time.
If I add the number of method calls for the subtasks, I get the same number as the sequential search. So, basically, in both cases I do the same number of method calls, but I get different times.
I'm guessing there's some overhead on initial method calls or something else caused by a JVM mechanism. Any ideas what could it be?
For example, one sequential search takes around 3300 ms. If I break it into 13 tasks, it takes a total time of 3500ms.
My method looks like this:
private static final int dfs(State state) {
method_calls++;
if(state.isLeaf()){
return 1;
}
State[] children = state.expand();
int result = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < children.length; i++) {
result += dfs(children[i]);
}
return result;
}
Whenever I call it, I do it like this:
for(int i = 0; i < num_tasks; i++){
long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
dfs(tasks[i]);
totalTime += (System.currentTimeMillis() - start);
}
Problem is totalTime increases with num_tasks and I would expect to stay the same because the method_calls variable stays the same.

You should average out the numbers over longer runs. Secondly the precision of currentTimeMillis may not be sufficient, you can try using System.nanoTime().

As in all the programming languages, whenever you call a procedure or a method, you have to push the environment, initialize the new one, execute the programs instructions, return the value on the stack and finally reset the previous environment. It cost a bit! Create a thread cost also more!
I suppose that if you enlarge the researching tree you will have benefit by the parallelization.

Adding system clock time for several threads seems a weird idea. Either you are interested in the time until processing is complete, in which case adding doesn't make sense, or in cpu usage, in which case you should only count when the thread is actually scheduled to execute.
What probably happens is that at least part of the time, more threads are ready to execute than the system has cpu cores, and the scheduler puts one of your threads to sleep, which causes it to take longer to complete. It makes sense that this effect is exacerbated the more threads you use. (Even if your program uses less threads than you have cores, other programs (such as your development environment, ...) might).
If you are interested in CPU usage, you might wish to query ThreadMXBean.getCurrentThreadCpuTime

I'd expect to see Threads used. Something like this:
import java.util.concurrent.Executor;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;
public class Puzzle {
static volatile long totalTime = 0;
private static int method_calls = 0;
/**
* #param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
final int num_tasks = 13;
final State[] tasks = new State[num_tasks];
ExecutorService threadPool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(5);
for(int i = 0; i < num_tasks; i++){
threadPool.submit(new DfsRunner(tasks[i]));
}
try {
threadPool.shutdown();
threadPool.awaitTermination(1, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
System.out.println("Interrupted");
}
System.out.println(method_calls + " Methods in " + totalTime + "msecs");
}
static final int dfs(State state) {
method_calls++;
if(state.isLeaf()){
return 1;
}
State[] children = state.expand();
int result = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < children.length; i++) {
result += dfs(children[i]);
}
return result;
}
}
With the runnable bit like this:
public class DfsRunner implements Runnable {
private State state;
public DfsRunner(State state) {
super();
this.state = state;
}
#Override
public void run() {
long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
Puzzle.dfs(state);
Puzzle.totalTime += (System.currentTimeMillis() - start);
}
}

Why does an IllegalThreadStateException occur when Thread.start is called again

public class SieveGenerator{
static int N = 50;
public static void main(String args[]){
int cores = Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors();
int f[] = new int[N];
//fill array with 0,1,2...f.length
for(int j=0;j<f.length;j++){
f[j]=j;
}
f[0]=0;f[1]=0;//eliminate these cases
int p=2;
removeNonPrime []t = new removeNonPrime[cores];
for(int i = 0; i < cores; i++){
t[i] = new removeNonPrime(f,p);
}
while(p <= (int)(Math.sqrt(N))){
t[p%cores].start();//problem here because you cannot start a thread which has already started(IllegalThreadStateException)
try{
t[p%cores].join();
}catch(Exception e){}
//get the next prime
p++;
while(p<=(int)(Math.sqrt(N))&&f[p]==0)p++;
}
//count primes
int total = 0;
System.out.println();
for(int j=0; j<f.length;j++){
if(f[j]!=0){
total++;
}
}
System.out.printf("Number of primes up to %d = %d",f.length,total);
}
}
class removeNonPrime extends Thread{
int k;
int arr[];
public removeNonPrime(int arr[], int k){
this.arr = arr;
this.k = k;
}
public void run(){
int j = k*k;
while(j<arr.length){
if(arr[j]%k == 0)arr[j]=0;
j=j+arr[k];
}
}
}
Hi I'm getting an IllegalThreadStateException when I run my code and I've figured it's because I am trying to start a thread that has already been started. So how could I kill
or stop the thread each time, to get around this problem?

how could I kill or stop the thread each time, to get around this problem?
The answer is, you can't. Once started, a Thread may not be restarted. This is clearly documented in the javadoc for Thread. Instead, what you really want to do is new an instance of RemoveNonPrime each time you come around in your loop.
You have a few other problems in your code.
First, you need to increment p before using it again:
for(int i = 0; i < cores; i++){
t[i] = new removeNonPrime(f,p); //<--- BUG, always using p=2 means only multiples of 2 are cleared
}
Second, you might be multithreaded, but you aren't concurrent. The code you have basically only allows one thread to run at a time:
while(p <= (int)(Math.sqrt(N))){
t[p%cores].start();//
try{
t[p%cores].join(); //<--- BUG, only the thread which was just started can be running now
}catch(Exception e){}
//get the next prime
p++;
while(p<=(int)(Math.sqrt(N))&&f[p]==0)p++;
}
Just my $0.02, but what you are trying to do might work, but the logic for selecting the next smallest prime will not always pick a prime, for example if one of the other threads hasn't processed that part of the array yet.
Here is an approach using an ExecutorService, there are some blanks (...) that you will have to fill in:
/* A queue to trick the executor into blocking until a Thread is available when offer is called */
public class SpecialSyncQueue<E> extends SynchronousQueue<E> {
#Override
public boolean offer(E e) {
try {
put(e);
return true;
} catch (InterruptedException ex) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
return false;
}
}
}
ExecutorService executor = new ThreadPoolExecutor(cores, cores, new SpecialSyncQueue(), ...);
void pruneNonPrimes() {
//...
while(p <= (int)(Math.sqrt(N))) {
executor.execute(new RemoveNonPrime(f, p));
//get the next prime
p++;
while(p<=(int)(Math.sqrt(N))&&f[p]==0)p++;
}
//count primes
int total = 0;
System.out.println();
for(int j=0; j<f.length;j++){
if(f[j]!=0){
total++;
}
}
System.out.printf("Number of primes up to %d = %d",f.length,total);
}
class RemoveNonPrime extends Runnable {
int k;
int arr[];
public RemoveNonPrime(int arr[], int k){
this.arr = arr;
this.k = k;
}
public void run(){
int j = k*k;
while(j<arr.length){
if(arr[j]%k == 0)arr[j]=0;
j+=k;
}
}
}

You could implement Runnable instead and use new Thread( $Runnable here ).start() or use a ExecutorService to reuse threads.

* It is never legal to start a thread more than once.
* In particular, a thread may not be restarted once it has completed
* execution.
*
* #exception IllegalThreadStateException if the thread was already started
*/
public synchronized void start() {
In Android, document still mention that we will get IllegalThreadStateException if the thread was already started.
However for some device it will not throw this exception (tested on Kyocera 7.0). In some popular device like Samsung, HTC, it throw throw the exception normally
I answer here because the Android question is mark as duplicated to this question.

Why does an IllegalThreadStateException occur when Thread.start is
called again
Because JDK/JVM implementers coded Thread.start() method that way. Its a reasonable functional expectation to be able to restart a thread after a thread has completed its execution and that is what being suggested in chrisbunney's answer ( and I have put in a comment in that answer ) but if you look at Thread.start() implementation , the very first line is ,
if (threadStatus != 0)
throw new IllegalThreadStateException();
where threadStatus == 0 means NEW state so my guess is that implementation doesn't resets this state to zero after execution has completed & thread is left in TERMINATED state ( non - zero state ). So when you create a new Thread instance on same Runnable , you basically reset this state to zero.
Also, I noticed the usage of word - may & never in same paragraph as different behavior is being pointed out by Phan Van Linh on some OSes,
It is never legal to start a thread more than once. In particular, a
thread may not be restarted once it has completed execution.
I guess what they are trying to say in above Javadoc that even if you don't get IllegalThreadStateException on certain OS, its not legal in Java/Thread class way & you might get unexpected behavior.
The famous thread state diagrams depict the same scenario - no going back from dead state to new.

ThreadPools can be used for delivering tasks to set number of threads. When initiating you set the number of threads. Then you add tasks for the pool. And after you can block until all tasks have finished processing. Here is some sample code.

I am not at all sure I understand the question. All the methods for stopping threads that are executed from other threads are deprecated; the way to stop a thread is to have it check a variable that it and another thread can access (perhaps a volatile variable), and have the running thread check it occasionally to see if it should exit on its own.
I cannot tell why/whether you want to eliminate the running thread and use another one, and I cannot see how the different threads are going to help execute your overall goal any faster. But it's possible I'm just not understanding the math.

The Thread.isAlive() method can tell you if the Thread has already been started. Simply do this where you want to start your thread:
if(!t[p%cores].isAlive()){
t[p%cores].start();
}