Win32 Thread Pool

What is a thread pool? Exactly that, a pool of threads. You may have heard of terms like object pooling, thread pooling, car pooling (oops), anyway, the idea behind pooling is that you can re-use the objects which may be threads or database connections or instances of some class. Now why would we ever want to re-use such things? The most important reason would be that creating such an object might take up a lot of resources or time, so, we do the next best thing. We create a bunch of them initially and call the bunch a pool. Whenever someone (some code) wants to use such an object, instead of creating a new one, it gets it from the already existing bunch (pool).

Background

Usually when I develop something, there is a fairly good reason behind it like my project demanded it or I did it for someone who asked me about it, but this thread pool was a result of neither of these. Actually, around a year back, I had attended an interview with a company where I was asked this question. Well at that time, I didn't really think of it seriously, but a few days back the question came back to me, and this time I decided it was time to get my answer working.

Using the Code

Main Files

   * threadpool.h & threadpool.cpp - defines the CThreadPool class. This class is the main class which provides the thread pooling facilities.
   * ThreadPoolAppDlg.cpp - see the OnOK() method. This method makes use of the thread pool.

This example was written using VC++ 6.0. The source has now been updated for Visual Studio 2008. The thread pool class itself does not make use of any MFC classes so you should be able to use the thread pool for pure Win32 applications also.

Read more: Codeproject

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