Synchronization Objects and Threadpool

Question

This is Windows server application being written in VC++. I am going to use threadpool to handle various request objects coming to the server. Obviously, when a thread is working on particular request and writing its response to the socket, other thread has to wait till it finishes. I fear this probably is not efficient way to use threadpool.

My question therefore is: If a thread in the threadpool is waiting for thread synchronization object to be freed, it would not be efficient way to use threadpool. Is there any way we can avoid this? (Possibly, knowing in advance if the object is free before allocating thread to work upon)

Answer 1

You could have just one thread writing things to the socket. The other threads put their data in a queue, and the output thread reads from the queue and writes data to the socket.

Assuming, of course, that the threads don't need to wait for a response from the socket in order to continue.

Additionally, it really depends on how often and for how long you expect threads to be waiting on the socket. If it only happens occasionally, then there is no problem. Threads will process at their maximum rate and infrequently they'll have to wait for another thread to finish sending before they send. But if the threads spend a lot of time waiting for the socket, then you probably want to find another way to do things. The output queue with a dedicated thread handling the socket works quite well and is pretty easy to set up.