How many threads is too many?

Question

I am writing a server, and I send each action of into a separate thread when the request is received. I do this because almost every request makes a database query. I am usi

Answer 1

This question has been discussed quite thoroughly and I didn't get a chance to read all the responses. But here's few things to take into consideration while looking at the upper limit on number of simultaneous threads that can co-exist peacefully in a given system.

1. Thread Stack Size : In Linux the default thread stack size is 8MB (you can use ulimit -a to find it out).
2. Max Virtual memory that a given OS variant supports. Linux Kernel 2.4 supports a memory address space of 2 GB. with Kernel 2.6 , I a bit bigger (3GB )
3. [1] shows the calculations for the max number of threads per given Max VM Supported. For 2.4 it turns out to be about 255 threads. for 2.6 the number is a bit larger.
4. What kindda kernel scheduler you have . Comparing Linux 2.4 kernel scheduler with 2.6 , the later gives you a O(1) scheduling with no dependence upon number of tasks existing in a system while first one is more of a O(n). So also the SMP Capabilities of the kernel schedule also play a good role in max number of sustainable threads in a system.

Now you can tune your stack size to incorporate more threads but then you have to take into account the overheads of thread management(creation/destruction and scheduling). You can enforce CPU Affinity to a given process as well as to a given thread to tie them down to specific CPUs to avoid thread migration overheads between the CPUs and avoid cold cash issues.

Note that one can create thousands of threads at his/her wish , but when Linux runs out of VM it just randomly starts killing processes (thus threads). This is to keep the utility profile from being maxed out. (The utility function tells about system wide utility for a given amount of resources. With a constant resources in this case CPU Cycles and Memory, the utility curve flattens out with more and more number of tasks ).

I am sure windows kernel scheduler also does something of this sort to deal with over utilization of the resources

[1] http://adywicaksono.wordpress.com/2007/07/10/i-can-not-create-more-than-255-threads-on-linux-what-is-the-solutions/