What is the principle behind the cyclic barrier?
CyclicBarrier is a synchronization utility class in Java that allows a group of threads to wait for each other to reach a common point. It can be used to address issues related to multi-threaded collaboration, operating on the principle as follows:
- The CyclicBarrier consists of a counter, a blocking queue, and a barrier point for resetting the counter.
- When a thread calls the await() method of a CyclicBarrier, it will be blocked until the counter reaches the specified threshold value.
- When the value of the counter reaches the threshold, all blocked threads will be released, and the counter will be reset to its initial value.
- The CyclicBarrier can be reused multiple times once the counter is reset.
- If a thread is interrupted or times out while waiting, the CyclicBarrier will throw a BrokenBarrierException to indicate that the barrier has been broken.
The principle of CyclicBarrier is to use a counter and a blocking queue to achieve synchronization and waiting between multiple threads. It can be used to solve scenarios where all threads need to reach a certain point before continuing, such as multiple threads simultaneously executing different subtasks, waiting for all subtasks to complete before continuing with the main task.