Java – performance comparison test between threadlocalrandom and shared static random instances

In our project for a task, we use static random instances to generate random numbers After the release of Java 7, a new threadlocalrandom class appeared to generate random numbers

From specification:

And:

So I did a little test:

public class ThreadLocalRandomTest {

private static final int THREAD_COUNT = 100;
private static final int GENERATED_NUMBER_COUNT = 1000;
private static final int INT_RIGHT_BORDER = 5000;
private static final int EXPERIMENTS_COUNT = 5000;

public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
    System.out.println("Number of threads: " + THREAD_COUNT);
    System.out.println("Length of generated numbers chain for each thread: " + GENERATED_NUMBER_COUNT);
    System.out.println("Right border integer: " + INT_RIGHT_BORDER);
    System.out.println("Count of experiments: " + EXPERIMENTS_COUNT);

    int repeats = 0;
    int workingTime = 0;
    long startTime = 0;
    long endTime = 0;

    for (int i = 0; i < EXPERIMENTS_COUNT; i++) {
        startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
        repeats += calculateRepeatsForSharedRandom();
        endTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
        workingTime += endTime - startTime;
    }
    System.out.println("Average repeats for shared Random instance: " + repeats / EXPERIMENTS_COUNT
            + ". Average working time: " + workingTime / EXPERIMENTS_COUNT + " ms.");

    repeats = 0;
    workingTime = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < EXPERIMENTS_COUNT; i++) {
        startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
        repeats += calculateRepeatsForTheadLocalRandom();
        endTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
        workingTime += endTime - startTime;
    }
    System.out.println("Average repeats for ThreadLocalRandom: " + repeats / EXPERIMENTS_COUNT
            + ". Average working time: " + workingTime / EXPERIMENTS_COUNT + " ms.");
}

private static int calculateRepeatsForSharedRandom() throws InterruptedException {
    final Random rand = new Random();
    final Map<Integer,Integer> counts = new HashMap<>();

    for (int i = 0; i < THREAD_COUNT; i++) {
        Thread thread = new Thread() {
            @Override
            public void run() {

                for (int j = 0; j < GENERATED_NUMBER_COUNT; j++) {
                    int random = rand.nextInt(INT_RIGHT_BORDER);
                    if (!counts.containsKey(random)) {
                        counts.put(random,0);
                    }
                    counts.put(random,counts.get(random) + 1);
                }
            }
        };
        thread.start();
        thread.join();
    }

    int repeats = 0;
    for (Integer value : counts.values()) {
        if (value > 1) {
            repeats += value;
        }
    }

    return repeats;
}

private static int calculateRepeatsForTheadLocalRandom() throws InterruptedException {
    final Map<Integer,Integer> counts = new HashMap<>();

    for (int i = 0; i < THREAD_COUNT; i++) {
        Thread thread = new Thread() {
            @Override
            public void run() {

                for (int j = 0; j < GENERATED_NUMBER_COUNT; j++) {
                    int random = ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(INT_RIGHT_BORDER);
                    if (!counts.containsKey(random)) {
                        counts.put(random,counts.get(random) + 1);
                }
            }
        };
        thread.start();
        thread.join();
    }

    int repeats = 0;
    for (Integer value : counts.values()) {
        if (value > 1) {
            repeats += value;
        }
    }

    return repeats;
}

}

I also added a non shared random test and got the next result:

Number of threads: 100
Length of generated numbers chain for each thread: 100
Right border integer: 5000
Count of experiments: 10000
Average repeats for non-shared Random instance: 8646. Average working time: 13 ms.
Average repeats for shared Random instance: 8646. Average working time: 13 ms.
Average repeats for ThreadLocalRandom: 8646. Average working time: 13 ms.

As for me, it's a little strange. I expect to be faster at least when using threadlocalrandom compared with the shared random instance, but it doesn't seem to make any difference

Someone can explain why it works, something I may not understand Thank you in advance

Solution

You are not running anything in parallel because you are waiting for each thread to complete immediately after startup You need a wait loop outside the loop to start the thread:

List<Thread> threads = new ArrayList<Thread>();
for (int i = 0; i < THREAD_COUNT; i++) {
    Thread thread = new Thread() {
        @Override
        public void run() {

            for (int j = 0; j < GENERATED_NUMBER_COUNT; j++) {
                int random = rand.nextInt(INT_RIGHT_BORDER);
                if (!counts.containsKey(random)) {
                    counts.put(random,0);
                }
                counts.put(random,counts.get(random) + 1);
            }
        }
    };
    threads.add(thread);
    thread.start();
}

for (Thread thread: threads) {
    thread.join();
}