Turn based synchronization between threads
- by Amarus
I'm trying to find a way to synchronize multiple threads having the following conditions:
* There are two types of threads:
1. A single "cyclic" thread executing an infinite loop to do cyclic calculations
2. Multiple short-lived threads not started by the main thread
* The cyclic thread has a sleep duration between each cycle/loop iteration
* The other threads are allowed execute during the inter-cycle sleep of the cyclic thread:
- Any other thread that attempts to execute during an active cycle should be blocked
- The cyclic thread will wait until all other threads that are already executing to be finished
Here's a basic example of what I was thinking of doing:
// Somewhere in the code:
ManualResetEvent manualResetEvent = new ManualResetEvent(true); // Allow Externally call
CountdownEvent countdownEvent = new CountdownEvent(1); // Can't AddCount a CountdownEvent with CurrentCount = 0
void ExternallyCalled()
{
manualResetEvent.WaitOne(); // Wait until CyclicCalculations is having its beauty sleep
countdownEvent.AddCount(); // Notify CyclicCalculations that it should wait for this method call to finish before starting the next cycle
Thread.Sleep(1000); // TODO: Replace with actual method logic
countdownEvent.Signal(); // Notify CyclicCalculations that this call is finished
}
void CyclicCalculations()
{
while (!stopCyclicCalculations)
{
manualResetEvent.Reset(); // Block all incoming calls to ExternallyCalled from this point forward
countdownEvent.Signal(); // Dirty workaround for the issue with AddCount and CurrentCount = 0
countdownEvent.Wait(); // Wait until all of the already executing calls to ExternallyCalled are finished
countdownEvent.Reset(); // Reset the CountdownEvent for next cycle.
Thread.Sleep(2000); // TODO: Replace with actual method logic
manualResetEvent.Set(); // Unblock all threads executing ExternallyCalled
Thread.Sleep(1000); // Inter-cycles delay
}
}
Obviously, this doesn't work. There's no guarantee that there won't be any threads executing ExternallyCalled that are in between manualResetEvent.WaitOne(); and countdownEvent.AddCount(); at the time the main thread gets released by the CountdownEvent.
I can't figure out a simple way of doing what I'm after, and almost everything that I've found after a lengthy search is related to producer/consumer synchronization which I can't apply here.
