A thread pool is a software design pattern used in multithreaded programming to manage and reuse a group (or “pool”) of worker threads for executing tasks asynchronously. Thread pools are used to improve the efficiency and performance of applications that need to handle multiple concurrent tasks or operations, especially in situations where creating a new thread for each task would be inefficient.
Here’s why thread pools are used and their benefits
1. Thread Creation and Destruction Overhead Reduction:
Creating and destroying threads can be a resource-intensive operation. Thread pools alleviate this overhead by maintaining a pool of pre-allocated threads. These threads are created when the pool is initialized and remain alive throughout the application’s lifecycle. When a task needs to be executed, it is assigned to an available thread from the pool. This avoids the overhead of creating and destroying threads for each task.
Analogy: Imagine a restaurant that has a pool of waiters. When a customer arrives, the restaurant assigns a waiter to take the customer’s order. The waiter takes the order and delivers it to the kitchen. Once the food is ready, the waiter picks it up and delivers it to the customer.
