Java 7 introduce a new parallel mechanism for compute intensive tasks, the fork-join framework. The fork-join framework allows you to distribute a certain task on several workers and when wait for the result.

For Java 6.0 you can download the package (jsr166y) from

For testing create the Java project "de.vogella.performance.forkjoin". If you are not using Java 7 you also need to "jsr166y.jar" to the classpath.

Create first a package "algorithm" and then the problem class.

			
package algorithm;

import java.util.Random;

/**
 * 
 * This class defines a long list of integers which defines the problem we will
 * later try to solve
 * 
 */
public class Problem {
	private final int[] list = new int[2000000];

	public Problem() {
		Random generator = new Random(19580427);
		for (int i = 0; i < list.length; i++) {
			list[i] = generator.nextInt(500000);
		}
	}

	public int[] getList() {
		return list;
	}

}

		

Define now the solver class. This class extends RecursiveTask.

			
package algorithm;

import java.util.Arrays;

import jsr166y.forkjoin.RecursiveAction;

public class Solver extends RecursiveAction {
	private int[] list;
	public long result;

	public Solver(int[] array) {
		this.list = array;
	}

	@Override
	protected void compute() {
		if (list.length == 1) {
			result = list[0];
		} else {
			int midpoint = list.length / 2;
			int[] l1 = Arrays.copyOfRange(list, 0, midpoint);
			int[] l2 = Arrays.copyOfRange(list, midpoint, list.length);
			Solver s1 = new Solver(l1);
			Solver s2 = new Solver(l2);
			forkJoin(s1, s2);
			result = s1.result + s2.result;
		}
	}
}

		

Now define a small test class for testing it efficiency.

			
package testing;

import jsr166y.forkjoin.ForkJoinExecutor;
import jsr166y.forkjoin.ForkJoinPool;
import algorithm.Problem;
import algorithm.Solver;

public class Test {

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Problem test = new Problem();
		// Check the number of available processors
		int nThreads = Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors();
		System.out.println(nThreads);
		Solver mfj = new Solver(test.getList());
		ForkJoinExecutor pool = new ForkJoinPool(nThreads);
		pool.invoke(mfj);
		long result = mfj.getResult();
		System.out.println("Done. Result: " + result);
		long sum = 0;
		// Check if the result was ok
		for (int i = 0; i < test.getList().length; i++) {
			sum += test.getList()[i];
		}
		System.out.println("Done. Result: " + sum);
	}
}