Glassthought

CountDownLatch

3 min read

GT-Sandbox-Snapshot: CountDownLatch in Action (Synchronizing from 5 threads)

Code

package com.glassthought.sandbox
 
import gt.sandbox.util.output.Out
import kotlinx.coroutines.runBlocking
import kotlin.concurrent.thread
 
import kotlinx.atomicfu.atomic
import kotlinx.atomicfu.updateAndGet
import kotlinx.coroutines.CompletableDeferred
import kotlinx.coroutines.delay
 
class CountdownLatch(initialCount: Int) {
  // Validate input
  init {
    require(initialCount >= 0) {
      "Count must be non-negative, but was $initialCount"
    }
  }
 
  // Atomic integer to track remaining count
  private val remaining = atomic(initialCount)
 
  // CompletableDeferred that completes when count hits zero
  private val latchCompletion = CompletableDeferred<Unit>()
 
  /**
   * Decrements the internal counter. If counter reaches zero, this completes the [latchCompletion].
   *
   * Calls beyond the point where count is already zero have no effect.
   */
  fun countDown() {
    /**
     * Atomically decrements the remaining counter by 1, but never below zero.
     *
     * Under the hood, `updateAndGet` uses a compare-and-set (CAS) loop:
     * 1. It reads the current value of [remaining].
     * 2. It applies the `if (current > 0) current - 1 else current` update function.
     * 3. It attempts to set the [remaining] value to this new result via CAS.
     *    - If another thread/coroutine updated [remaining] in between steps (1) and (3),
     *      the CAS fails, and `updateAndGet` automatically retries with the fresh value.
     *
     * By retrying until a single successful CAS occurs, collisions among multiple
     * parallel threads or coroutines are safely resolved. Each call will correctly
     * decrement the counter exactly once if it’s above zero, and do nothing if it’s
     * already zero—preventing the counter from ever going negative or missing
     * decrements due to concurrency.
     */
    val updatedCount = remaining.updateAndGet { current ->
      if (current > 0) current - 1 else current
    }
 
    // If we just hit zero, fulfill the latch
    if (updatedCount == 0) {
      latchCompletion.complete(Unit)
    }
  }
 
  /**
   * Suspends until the latch has counted down to zero.
   *
   * If the latch is already at zero, this returns immediately.
   */
  suspend fun await() {
    latchCompletion.await()
  }
 
  fun remaining(): Int {
    return remaining.value
  }
}
 
fun main() = runBlocking {
  val out = Out.standard() // Assuming Out.standard() is implemented elsewhere
 
  val iterations = 10000000
 
  val decrementThreadCount = 5
  val countdownLatch = CountdownLatch((iterations * decrementThreadCount) + 1)
 
  val threads = (1..decrementThreadCount).map {
    thread(name = "background-thread-$it") {
      runBlocking {
        out.info("Going to count down latch $iterations times")
 
        repeat(iterations) {
          countdownLatch.countDown()
        }
      }
    }
  }
 
  val thread3Waiter= thread(name = "background-waiter") {
    runBlocking {
      out.info("Starting to wait on the latch")
      countdownLatch.await()
      out.info("Done waiting: Latch has been counted down to zero")
    }
  }
 
  threads.forEach { it.join() }
 
  if (countdownLatch.remaining() == 1) {
    out.infoGreen("CountdownLatch is equal to expected value")
  } else {
    out.infoRed("CountdownLatch is not equal to expected value")
  }
 
  out.info("Now going to wait 10ms prior to counting down the latch to zero")
  delay(10)
  countdownLatch.countDown()
}

Command to reproduce:

gt.sandbox.checkout.commit d35722e2855292845283 \
&& cd "${GT_SANDBOX_REPO}" \
&& cmd.run.announce "./gradlew run --quiet"

Recorded output of command:

[elapsed:   25ms][⓸/tname:background-waiter/tid:25][coroutine:unnamed] Starting to wait on the latch
[elapsed:   25ms][⓷/tname:background-thread-5/tid:24][coroutine:unnamed] Going to count down latch 10000000 times
[elapsed:   25ms][⓻/tname:background-thread-2/tid:21][coroutine:unnamed] Going to count down latch 10000000 times
[elapsed:   25ms][⓹/tname:background-thread-3/tid:22][coroutine:unnamed] Going to count down latch 10000000 times
[elapsed:   25ms][⓶/tname:background-thread-4/tid:23][coroutine:unnamed] Going to count down latch 10000000 times
[elapsed:   25ms][⓺/tname:background-thread-1/tid:20][coroutine:unnamed] Going to count down latch 10000000 times
[elapsed: 5284ms][🥇/tname:main/tid:1][coroutine:unnamed] CountdownLatch is equal to expected value
[elapsed: 5285ms][🥇/tname:main/tid:1][coroutine:unnamed] Now going to wait 10ms prior to counting down the latch to zero
[elapsed: 5298ms][⓸/tname:background-waiter/tid:25][coroutine:unnamed] Done waiting: Latch has been counted down to zero

Graph View