An introduction to the Phaser class
The Phaser class is a synchronization mechanism designed to control the execution of algorithms that can be divided into phases in a concurrent way. If you have a process with clearly defined steps, so you have to finish the first one before you can start the second one, and so on, you can use this class to make a concurrent version of your process. The main characteristics of the Phaser class are:
- The phaser must know the number of tasks it has to control. Java refers to this as the registration of the participants. A participant can register in a phaser any time.
- The tasks must inform the phaser when they finish a phase. The phaser will make that task sleep until all the participants have finished that phase.
- Internally, the phaser saves an integer number that stores the number of phase changes the phase has made.
- A participant can leave the control of the phaser any time. Java refers to this as deregistering the participants.
- You can execute custom code...
