Is there a Pool class for worker threads, similar to the multiprocessing module’s Pool class?

I like for example the easy way to parallelize a map function

def long_running_func(p):
    c_func_no_gil(p)

p = multiprocessing.Pool(4)
xs = p.map(long_running_func, range(100))

however I would like to do it without the overhead of creating new processes.

I know about the GIL. However, in my usecase, the function will be an IO-bound C function for which the python wrapper will release the GIL before the actual function call.

Do I have to write my own threading pool?

I just found out that there actually is a thread-based Pool interface in the multiprocessing module, however it is hidden somewhat and not properly documented.

It can be imported via

from multiprocessing.pool import ThreadPool

It is implemented using a dummy Process class wrapping a python thread. This thread-based Process class can be found in multiprocessing.dummy which is mentioned briefly in the docs. This dummy module supposedly provides the whole multiprocessing interface based on threads.

In Python 3 you can use concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor, i.e.:

executor = ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=10)
a = executor.submit(my_function)

See the docs for more info and examples.

Yes, and it seems to have (more or less) the same API.

import multiprocessing

def worker(lnk):
    ....    
def start_process():
    .....
....

if(PROCESS):
    pool = multiprocessing.Pool(processes=POOL_SIZE, initializer=start_process)
else:
    pool = multiprocessing.pool.ThreadPool(processes=POOL_SIZE, 
                                           initializer=start_process)

pool.map(worker, inputs)
....

For something very simple and lightweight (slightly modified from here):

from Queue import Queue
from threading import Thread


class Worker(Thread):
    """Thread executing tasks from a given tasks queue"""
    def __init__(self, tasks):
        Thread.__init__(self)
        self.tasks = tasks
        self.daemon = True
        self.start()

    def run(self):
        while True:
            func, args, kargs = self.tasks.get()
            try:
                func(*args, **kargs)
            except Exception, e:
                print e
            finally:
                self.tasks.task_done()


class ThreadPool:
    """Pool of threads consuming tasks from a queue"""
    def __init__(self, num_threads):
        self.tasks = Queue(num_threads)
        for _ in range(num_threads):
            Worker(self.tasks)

    def add_task(self, func, *args, **kargs):
        """Add a task to the queue"""
        self.tasks.put((func, args, kargs))

    def wait_completion(self):
        """Wait for completion of all the tasks in the queue"""
        self.tasks.join()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    from random import randrange
    from time import sleep

    delays = [randrange(1, 10) for i in range(100)]

    def wait_delay(d):
        print 'sleeping for (%d)sec' % d
        sleep(d)

    pool = ThreadPool(20)

    for i, d in enumerate(delays):
        pool.add_task(wait_delay, d)

    pool.wait_completion()

To support callbacks on task completion you can just add the callback to the task tuple.

Hi to use the thread pool in Python you can use this library :

from multiprocessing.dummy import Pool as ThreadPool

and then for use, this library do like that :

pool = ThreadPool(threads)
results = pool.map(service, tasks)
pool.close()
pool.join()
return results

The threads are the number of threads that you want and tasks are a list of task that most map to the service.

Here’s the result I finally ended up using. It’s a modified version of the classes by dgorissen above.

File: threadpool.py

from queue import Queue, Empty
import threading
from threading import Thread


class Worker(Thread):
    _TIMEOUT = 2
    """ Thread executing tasks from a given tasks queue. Thread is signalable, 
        to exit
    """
    def __init__(self, tasks, th_num):
        Thread.__init__(self)
        self.tasks = tasks
        self.daemon, self.th_num = True, th_num
        self.done = threading.Event()
        self.start()

    def run(self):       
        while not self.done.is_set():
            try:
                func, args, kwargs = self.tasks.get(block=True,
                                                   timeout=self._TIMEOUT)
                try:
                    func(*args, **kwargs)
                except Exception as e:
                    print(e)
                finally:
                    self.tasks.task_done()
            except Empty as e:
                pass
        return

    def signal_exit(self):
        """ Signal to thread to exit """
        self.done.set()


class ThreadPool:
    """Pool of threads consuming tasks from a queue"""
    def __init__(self, num_threads, tasks=[]):
        self.tasks = Queue(num_threads)
        self.workers = []
        self.done = False
        self._init_workers(num_threads)
        for task in tasks:
            self.tasks.put(task)

    def _init_workers(self, num_threads):
        for i in range(num_threads):
            self.workers.append(Worker(self.tasks, i))

    def add_task(self, func, *args, **kwargs):
        """Add a task to the queue"""
        self.tasks.put((func, args, kwargs))

    def _close_all_threads(self):
        """ Signal all threads to exit and lose the references to them """
        for workr in self.workers:
            workr.signal_exit()
        self.workers = []

    def wait_completion(self):
        """Wait for completion of all the tasks in the queue"""
        self.tasks.join()

    def __del__(self):
        self._close_all_threads()


def create_task(func, *args, **kwargs):
    return (func, args, kwargs)

To use the pool

from random import randrange
from time import sleep

delays = [randrange(1, 10) for i in range(30)]

def wait_delay(d):
    print('sleeping for (%d)sec' % d)
    sleep(d)

pool = ThreadPool(20)
for i, d in enumerate(delays):
    pool.add_task(wait_delay, d)
pool.wait_completion()

The overhead of creating the new processes is minimal, especially when it’s just 4 of them. I doubt this is a performance hot spot of your application. Keep it simple, optimize where you have to and where profiling results point to.

There is no built in thread based pool. However, it can be very quick to implement a producer/consumer queue with the Queue class.

From: https://docs.python.org/2/library/queue.html

from threading import Thread
from Queue import Queue
def worker():
    while True:
        item = q.get()
        do_work(item)
        q.task_done()

q = Queue()
for i in range(num_worker_threads):
     t = Thread(target=worker)
     t.daemon = True
     t.start()

for item in source():
    q.put(item)

q.join()       # block until all tasks are done