MultiThreading Vs ThreadPoolExecutor

java multithreading java.util.concurrent threadpoolexecutor
Pit Digger picture Pit Digger · Sep 22, 2012 · Viewed 12.5k times · Source

I have used multithreading in many of applications I wrote . While reading more I came across ThreadPoolExecutors. I couldn't not differentiate between the two scenario wise .

Still what I understand is I should use multithreading when I have a task I want to divide a task in to multiple small tasks to utilize CPU and do the work faster . And use ThreadPoolExecutor when I have a set to tasks and each task can be run independent of each other.

Please correct me if I am wrong . Thanks

Answer

assylias picture assylias · Sep 22, 2012

A ThreadPoolExecutor is just a high level API that enables you to run tasks in multiple threads while not having to deal with the low level Thread API. So it does not really make sense to differentiate between multithreading and ThreadPoolExecutor.

There are many flavours of ThreadPoolExecutors, but most of them allow more than one thread to run in parallel. Typically, you would use an Executor Service and use the Executors factory.

For example, a ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(10); will run the tasks you submit in 10 threads.

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