Performance Study and Dynamic Optimization Design for Thread Pool Systems

Thread pools have been widely used by many multithreaded applications. However, the determination of the pool size according to the application behavior still remains problematic. To automate this process, in this paper we have developed a set of performance metrics for quantitatively analyzing thread pool performance. For our experiments, we built a thread pool system which provides a general framework for thread pool research. Based on this simulation environment, we studied the performance impact brought by the thread pool on different multithreaded applications. Additionally, the correlations between internal characterizations of thread pools and their throughput were also examined. We then proposed and evaluated a heuristic algorithm to dynamically determine the optimal thread pool size. The simulation results show that this approach is effective in improving overall application performance. K e y w o r d s : Thread Pool, Analysis, Characterization, Implementation, and Dynamic Optimization.