CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosswiftmultithreadinggrand-central-dispatch
Samarth Kejriwal
Samarth Kejriwal

Reputation: 1176

GCD Serial Queue dispatch async and sync

I have some doubts regarding GCD.

Code snippet 1

serialQ.sync {
    print(1)
    serialQ.async {
        print(2)
    }
    serialQ.async {
        print(3)
    }
}

Code snippet 2

serialQ.async {
    print(1)
    serialQ.async {
        print(2)
    }
    serialQ.sync {
        print(3)
    }
}

I ran both of them in playground, and found that Code snippet 2 gives deadlock while Code snippet 1 runs fine. I have read a lot about GCD and started playing around with these concepts. Can anyone please provide a detailed explanation for the same ? PS : serialQ is a serial Queue

According to my understanding,

Serial Queue - generates only one thread at a time, and once that thread is freed up then it is occupied or free to do other tasks

Serial Queue dispatched sync - blocks the caller thread from which the serial queue is dispatched and performs the tasks on that thread.

Serial Queue dispatched async - does'nt not blocks the caller thread, infact it runs on a different thread and keeps the caller thread running.

But for the above query I am not able to get the proper explanation.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1465

Answers (2)

ipmcc
ipmcc

Reputation: 29946

You are calling sync inside a block already executing on the same queue. This will always cause a deadlock. sync is the equivalent of saying “execute this now and wait for it to return.” Since you are already executing on that queue, the queue never becomes available to execute the sync block. It sounds like you’re looking for recursive locks, but that’s not how queues work. It’s also quite arguably an anti-pattern in general. I discuss this more in this answer: How to implement a reentrant locking mechanism in objective-c through GCD?

EDIT: Came back to add some thoughts on your "understandings":

Serial Queue - generates only one thread at a time, and once that thread is freed up then it is occupied or free to do other tasks

A serial queue doesn't "generate" one thread. Queues and threads are different things and have different semantics. A serial queue requires one thread upon which to execute a work item, but there's not a one-to-one relationship between a serial queue and a thread. A thread is a relatively "heavy" resource and a queue is a relatively "light" resource. A single serial queue can execute work items on more than one thread over its lifetime (although never more than one thread at the same time). GCD maintains pools of threads that it uses to execute work items, but that is an implementation detail, and it's not necessary to understand how that's implemented in order to use queues properly.

Serial Queue dispatched sync - blocks the caller thread from which the serial queue is dispatched and performs the tasks on that thread.

A queue (serial or concurrent) is not "dispatched" (sync or otherwise). A work item is, well, enqueued into a queue. That work item will be subsequently executed by an arbitrary thread including, quite possibly, the calling thread. The guarantee is that only one work item enqueued to a given serial queue will be executing (on any thread) at one time.

Serial Queue dispatched async - doesn't block the ~caller~ enqueueing thread, in fact it runs on a different thread and keeps the caller thread running. (minor edits for readability)

This is close, but not quite accurate. It's true that enqueueing a work item onto a serial queue with async does not block the enqueueing thread. It's not necessarily true that the work item is executed by a different thread than the enqueueing thread, although in the common case, that is usually the case.

The thing to know here is that the difference between sync and async is strictly limited to the behavior of the enqueueing thread and has no (guaranteed) bearing or impact on which thread the work item is executed. If you enqueue a work item with sync the enqueueing thread will wait (possibly forever, in the specific case you outlined here) for the work item to complete, whereas if you enqueue a work item with async the enqueueing thread will continue executing.

Upvotes: 4

Rob
Rob

Reputation: 438467

A sync call, as you point out, blocks the current thread until the block runs. So when you make sync to the same serial queue that you’re currently on, you are blocking the queue, waiting for a block to run on the same queue that you just blocked, resulting in a deadlock.

If you really want to run something synchronously on the current queue, don’t dispatch it with sync at all and just run it directly. E.g.:

serialQ.async {
    print(1)
    serialQ.async {
        print(2)
    }
    // serialQ.sync {  // don't dispatch synchronously to the current serial queue
        print(3)
    // }
}

Or dispatch asynchronously. E.g.,

serialQ.async {
    print(1)
    serialQ.async {
        print(2)
    }
    serialQ.async {
        print(3)
    }
}

Or use a concurrent queue (in which case you have to be careful to make sure you don’t have thread explosion, which could result in deadlock, too). E.g.,

let concurrentQ = DispatchQueue(label: "...", attributes: .concurrent)

concurrentQ.async {
    print(1)
    concurrentQ.async {
        print(2)
    }
    concurrentQ.sync {
        print(3)
    }
}

Upvotes: 3

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