Haskell – Which green threads libraries are available for C that can match the performance and ease of use of Haskell’s green threads?

To address the question more generally...

Keep in mind that using synchronized on methods is really just shorthand (assume class is SomeClass):

synchronized static void foo() {
    ...
}

is the same as

static void foo() {
    synchronized(SomeClass.class) {
        ...
    }
}

and

synchronized void foo() {
    ...
}

is the same as

void foo() {
    synchronized(this) {
        ...
    }
}

You can use any object as the lock. If you want to lock subsets of static methods, you can

class SomeClass {
    private static final Object LOCK_1 = new Object() {};
    private static final Object LOCK_2 = new Object() {};
    static void foo() {
        synchronized(LOCK_1) {...}
    }
    static void fee() {
        synchronized(LOCK_1) {...}
    }
    static void fie() {
        synchronized(LOCK_2) {...}
    }
    static void fo() {
        synchronized(LOCK_2) {...}
    }
}

(for non-static methods, you would want to make the locks be non-static fields)

There are two basic ways to multi-thread in Java. Each logical task you create with these methods should run on a fresh core when needed and available.

Method one: define a Runnable or Thread object (which can take a Runnable in the constructor) and start it running with the Thread.start() method. It will execute on whatever core the OS gives it -- generally the less loaded one.

Tutorial: Defining and Starting Threads

Method two: define objects implementing the Runnable (if they don't return values) or Callable (if they do) interface, which contain your processing code. Pass these as tasks to an ExecutorService from the java.util.concurrent package. The java.util.concurrent.Executors class has a bunch of methods to create standard, useful kinds of ExecutorServices. Link to Executors tutorial.

From personal experience, the Executors fixed & cached thread pools are very good, although you'll want to tweak thread counts. Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors() can be used at run-time to count available cores. You'll need to shut down thread pools when your application is done, otherwise the application won't exit because the ThreadPool threads stay running.

Getting good multicore performance is sometimes tricky, and full of gotchas:

• Disk I/O slows down a LOT when run in parallel. Only one thread should do disk read/write at a time.
• Synchronization of objects provides safety to multi-threaded operations, but slows down work.
• If tasks are too trivial (small work bits, execute fast) the overhead of managing them in an ExecutorService costs more than you gain from multiple cores.
• Creating new Thread objects is slow. The ExecutorServices will try to re-use existing threads if possible.
• All sorts of crazy stuff can happen when multiple threads work on something. Keep your system simple and try to make tasks logically distinct and non-interacting.

One other problem: controlling work is hard! A good practice is to have one manager thread that creates and submits tasks, and then a couple working threads with work queues (using an ExecutorService).

I'm just touching on key points here -- multithreaded programming is considered one of the hardest programming subjects by many experts. It's non-intuitive, complex, and the abstractions are often weak.

Edit -- Example using ExecutorService:

public class TaskThreader {
    class DoStuff implements Callable {
       Object in;
       public Object call(){
         in = doStep1(in);
         in = doStep2(in);
         in = doStep3(in); 
         return in;
       }
       public DoStuff(Object input){
          in = input;
       }
    }

    public abstract Object doStep1(Object input);    
    public abstract Object doStep2(Object input);    
    public abstract Object doStep3(Object input);    

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        ExecutorService exec = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors());
        ArrayList<Callable> tasks = new ArrayList<Callable>();
        for(Object input : inputs){
           tasks.add(new DoStuff(input));
        }
        List<Future> results = exec.invokeAll(tasks);
        exec.shutdown();
        for(Future f : results) {
           write(f.get());
        }
    }
}