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You're reading from  Android Studio 4.2 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition

Product typeBook
Published inAug 2021
Reading LevelIntermediate
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781803231549
Edition1st Edition
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Author (1)
Neil Smyth
Neil Smyth
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Neil Smyth

Neil Smyth has over 25 years of experience in the IT industry, including roles in software development and enterprise-level UNIX and Linux system administration. In addition to a bachelor's degree in information technology, he also holds A+, Security+, Network+, Project+, and Microsoft Certified Professional certifications and is a CIW Database Design Specialist. Neil is the co-founder and CEO of Payload Media, Inc. (a technical content publishing company), and the author of the Essentials range of programming and system administration books.
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63.2 Threads vs Coroutines

A problem with threads is that they are a finite resource expensive in terms of CPU capabilities and system overhead. In the background, a lot of work is involved in creating, scheduling and destroying a thread. Although modern CPUs are able to run large numbers of threads, the actual number of threads that can be run in parallel at any one time is limited by the number of CPU cores (though newer CPUs have 8 cores, most Android devices contain CPUs with 4 cores). When more threads are required than there CPU cores, the system has to perform thread scheduling to decide how execution of these threads is to be shared between the available cores.

To avoid these overheads, instead of starting a new thread for each coroutine and then destroying it when the coroutine exits, Kotlin maintains a pool of active threads and manages how coroutines are assigned to those threads. When an active coroutine is suspended it is saved by the Kotlin runtime and another coroutine...

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Android Studio 4.2 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition
Published in: Aug 2021Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781803231549

Author (1)

author image
Neil Smyth

Neil Smyth has over 25 years of experience in the IT industry, including roles in software development and enterprise-level UNIX and Linux system administration. In addition to a bachelor's degree in information technology, he also holds A+, Security+, Network+, Project+, and Microsoft Certified Professional certifications and is a CIW Database Design Specialist. Neil is the co-founder and CEO of Payload Media, Inc. (a technical content publishing company), and the author of the Essentials range of programming and system administration books.
Read more about Neil Smyth