Custom thread pool in Java 8 parallel stream

Question

Is it possible to specify a custom thread pool for Java 8 parallel stream? I can not find it anywhere.

Imagine that I have a server application and I would like to

Answer 1

Note: There appears to be a fix implemented in JDK 10 that ensures the Custom Thread Pool uses the expected number of threads.

Parallel stream execution within a custom ForkJoinPool should obey the parallelism https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8190974

Answer 2

We can change the default parallelism using the following property:

-Djava.util.concurrent.ForkJoinPool.common.parallelism=16

which can set up to use more parallelism.

Answer 3

I tried the custom ForkJoinPool as follows to adjust the pool size:

private static Set<String> ThreadNameSet = new HashSet<>();
private static Callable<Long> getSum() {
    List<Long> aList = LongStream.rangeClosed(0, 10_000_000).boxed().collect(Collectors.toList());
    return () -> aList.parallelStream()
            .peek((i) -> {
                String threadName = Thread.currentThread().getName();
                ThreadNameSet.add(threadName);
            })
            .reduce(0L, Long::sum);
}

private static void testForkJoinPool() {
    final int parallelism = 10;

    ForkJoinPool forkJoinPool = null;
    Long result = 0L;
    try {
        forkJoinPool = new ForkJoinPool(parallelism);
        result = forkJoinPool.submit(getSum()).get(); //this makes it an overall blocking call

    } catch (InterruptedException | ExecutionException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } finally {
        if (forkJoinPool != null) {
            forkJoinPool.shutdown(); //always remember to shutdown the pool
        }
    }
    out.println(result);
    out.println(ThreadNameSet);
}

Here is the output saying the pool is using more threads than the default 4.

50000005000000
[ForkJoinPool-1-worker-8, ForkJoinPool-1-worker-9, ForkJoinPool-1-worker-6, ForkJoinPool-1-worker-11, ForkJoinPool-1-worker-10, ForkJoinPool-1-worker-1, ForkJoinPool-1-worker-15, ForkJoinPool-1-worker-13, ForkJoinPool-1-worker-4, ForkJoinPool-1-worker-2]

But actually there is a weirdo, when I tried to achieve the same result using ThreadPoolExecutor as follows:

BlockingDeque blockingDeque = new LinkedBlockingDeque(1000);
ThreadPoolExecutor fixedSizePool = new ThreadPoolExecutor(10, 20, 60, TimeUnit.SECONDS, blockingDeque, new MyThreadFactory("my-thread"));

but I failed.

It will only start the parallelStream in a new thread and then everything else is just the same, which again proves that the parallelStream will use the ForkJoinPool to start its child threads.

Answer 4

Here is how I set the max thread count flag mentioned above programatically and a code sniped to verify that the parameter is honored

System.setProperty("java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinPool.common.parallelism", "2");
Set<String> threadNames = Stream.iterate(0, n -> n + 1)
  .parallel()
  .limit(100000)
  .map(i -> Thread.currentThread().getName())
  .collect(Collectors.toSet());
System.out.println(threadNames);

// Output -> [ForkJoinPool.commonPool-worker-1, Test worker, ForkJoinPool.commonPool-worker-3]

Answer 5

Until now, I used the solutions described in the answers of this question. Now, I came up with a little library called Parallel Stream Support for that:

ForkJoinPool pool = new ForkJoinPool(NR_OF_THREADS);
ParallelIntStreamSupport.range(1, 1_000_000, pool)
    .filter(PrimesPrint::isPrime)
    .collect(toList())

But as @PabloMatiasGomez pointed out in the comments, there are drawbacks regarding the splitting mechanism of parallel streams which depends heavily on the size of the common pool. See Parallel stream from a HashSet doesn't run in parallel .

I am using this solution only to have separate pools for different types of work but I can not set the size of the common pool to 1 even if I don't use it.

Answer 6

Alternatively to the trick of triggering the parallel computation inside your own forkJoinPool you can also pass that pool to the CompletableFuture.supplyAsync method like in:

ForkJoinPool forkJoinPool = new ForkJoinPool(2);
CompletableFuture<List<Integer>> primes = CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() ->
    //parallel task here, for example
    range(1, 1_000_000).parallel().filter(PrimesPrint::isPrime).collect(toList()), 
    forkJoinPool
);