users@grizzly.java.net

Selector Thread Processing Insight

From: Ray Racine <ray.racine_at_gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:11:27 -0400

I'm trying to get an intuition on basic handling of an HTTP request and the
various thread pools available to service requests. The below is a "guess"
from an afternoon code crawl. Corrections _are_ appreciated.

1. For a given port, say 8080, there is only ONE SelectorThread. It is
literally a single thread. Only this thread is capable of processing an
OP_ACCEPT on the port (listener socket). (????)

2. However a SelectorThread MAY be configured to use a pool of reader
threads by setting the readerThreadCount to some positive number. This
spreads the load for OP_READ reads across several threads. This is done
inside the SelectorThread's Controller. In this case the Controller's
SelectorHandler is an instance of RoundRobinSelectorHandler which handles
the reads with a thread pool.

3. At some point when reading via the these polled reader threads, the
request channel is handed off to a ProtocolFilter as a Task on its own
WorkerThread, by default this is (wait for it) the DefaultProtocoalFilter!
which is specifically a HTTP protocol filter/handler.

4. In turn the ProcessorTask MAY be configured to support async writing.
 If this is so, then a different selector (if available) will be used to
perform the final output of the request.

Endpoint [ACCEPT] (1 Selector/Thread) ->
Readers [READ] (N ReadSelectors/Threads) ->
ProtocolFilter [READ??, PROCESS_REQUEST_IN_ADAPTER](M WorkerTasks/Threads)
->
OutputWriter [WRITE] (L WriteSelectors/Threads)


This gives up to 3 logic thread pools, one for a pool of reader threads, one
for a pool of worker threads, and one for a pool of writer threads.

Close so far???

Do all of these share the ExecutorService threadPool in the SelectorThread.
 In other words if the SelectorThread.threadPool max threads is say 100.
 Then at most one can have 100 active readers, workers and writers?


Thanks,

Ray




-- 
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape
finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. - Marcus Aurelius