Worker Pools in Mercury

In this example we’ll look at how to implement a worker pool using threads and concurrent queues.

import java.util.concurrent.*;

public class WorkerPools {

    // Here's the worker, of which we'll run several
    // concurrent instances. These workers will receive
    // work on the `jobs` queue and send the corresponding
    // results on `results`. We'll sleep a second per job to
    // simulate an expensive task.
    static class Worker implements Runnable {
        private final int id;
        private final BlockingQueue<Integer> jobs;
        private final BlockingQueue<Integer> results;

        Worker(int id, BlockingQueue<Integer> jobs, BlockingQueue<Integer> results) {
            this.id = id;
            this.jobs = jobs;
            this.results = results;
        }

        public void run() {
            try {
                while (true) {
                    Integer j = jobs.take();
                    System.out.println("worker " + id + " started  job " + j);
                    Thread.sleep(1000);
                    System.out.println("worker " + id + " finished job " + j);
                    results.put(j * 2);
                }
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
            }
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
        // In order to use our pool of workers we need to send
        // them work and collect their results. We make 2
        // queues for this.
        final int numJobs = 5;
        BlockingQueue<Integer> jobs = new LinkedBlockingQueue<>();
        BlockingQueue<Integer> results = new LinkedBlockingQueue<>();

        // This starts up 3 workers, initially blocked
        // because there are no jobs yet.
        for (int w = 1; w <= 3; w++) {
            Thread worker = new Thread(new Worker(w, jobs, results));
            worker.start();
        }

        // Here we send 5 `jobs` and then `close` that
        // queue to indicate that's all the work we have.
        for (int j = 1; j <= numJobs; j++) {
            jobs.put(j);
        }

        // Finally we collect all the results of the work.
        // This also ensures that the worker threads have
        // finished. An alternative way to wait for multiple
        // threads is to use a `CountDownLatch`.
        for (int a = 1; a <= numJobs; a++) {
            results.take();
        }
    }
}

Our running program shows the 5 jobs being executed by various workers. The program only takes about 2 seconds despite doing about 5 seconds of total work because there are 3 workers operating concurrently.

$ javac WorkerPools.java && java WorkerPools
worker 1 started  job 1
worker 2 started  job 2
worker 3 started  job 3
worker 1 finished job 1
worker 1 started  job 4
worker 2 finished job 2
worker 2 started  job 5
worker 3 finished job 3
worker 1 finished job 4
worker 2 finished job 5

Note that in Java, we use Threads and BlockingQueues to achieve similar functionality to goroutines and channels in Go. The Worker class implements Runnable, which allows it to be executed in a separate thread. The BlockingQueue interface provides thread-safe operations for adding and removing elements, similar to Go’s channels.