Are the experts wrong about non-blocking SocketChannels?

Question

Everyone says to use the new SocketChannel and Selector for "highly scalable" server applications. So I ran a couple of tests using non-blocking (via Selector) and thread-per-connection SocketChannels.
The Selector version consumes 8x more cpu than the thread-per-connecton version!
Using JDK 1.4.1 FCS on Win2K, with 1000 socket connections each sending 1k bytes per second, the Selector version was consuming 40% cpu with 10 threads; the thread-per-connection version (using blocking SocketChannels) was only consuming about 5% cpu with 1009 threads.
So, are the experts wrong? Is there a performance problem when number of SocketChannels exceed a certain threshold?
For anyone interested, here's the source code:
Non-Blocking Server using Selector
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.InetSocketAddress;
import java.net.ServerSocket;
import java.net.Socket;
import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
import java.nio.CharBuffer;
import java.nio.charset.Charset;
import java.nio.charset.CharsetDecoder;
import java.nio.charset.CharsetEncoder;
import java.nio.channels.FileChannel;
import java.nio.channels.SelectionKey;
import java.nio.channels.Selector;
import java.nio.channels.ServerSocketChannel;
import java.nio.channels.SocketChannel;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
public class Server4 implements Runnable
private static int port = 80;
public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception
Server4 server = new Server4();
Thread thread = new Thread(server);
thread.setDaemon(true);
thread.start();
thread.join();
public Server4() throws IOException
ServerSocketChannel server = ServerSocketChannel.open();
InetSocketAddress isa = new InetSocketAddress(port);
server.configureBlocking(false);
server.socket().bind(isa);
m_selector = Selector.open();
server.register(m_selector, SelectionKey.OP_ACCEPT);
Charset utf8 = Charset.forName("UTF-8");
m_decoder = utf8.newDecoder();
m_encoder = utf8.newEncoder();
public void run()
int count = 0;
try
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(2048);
//FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("server4.dat");
//FileChannel fc = fos.getChannel();
while (m_selector.select() > 0)
Set keys = m_selector.selectedKeys();
for (Iterator itr = keys.iterator(); itr.hasNext(); )
SelectionKey key = (SelectionKey) itr.next();
itr.remove();
if (key.isAcceptable())
System.out.println("accept: " + (++count));
ServerSocketChannel server
= (ServerSocketChannel) key.channel();
SocketChannel channel = server.accept();
channel.configureBlocking(false);
channel.register(m_selector, SelectionKey.OP_READ);
else
SocketChannel channel = null;
try
if (key.isReadable())
channel = (SocketChannel) key.channel();
int bytes = channel.read(buffer);
if (bytes <= 0) // Linux does not throw IOException
channel.close(); // will also cancel key
System.out.println("connection closed " + count);
else
buffer.flip();
//fc.write(buffer);
buffer.clear();
catch (IOException ioe) // connection closed by client
System.out.println("readable: " + ioe.getMessage());
sm_logger.log(Level.INFO, ioe.getMessage(), ioe);
Throwable cause = ioe.getCause();
if (cause != null)
System.out.println("cause: "
+ cause.getClass().getName()
+ ": " + cause.getMessage());
channel.close(); // will also cancel key
--count;
catch (IOException e)
System.out.println("run: " + e.getMessage());
sm_logger.log(Level.SEVERE, e.getMessage(), e);
catch (Exception e)
System.out.println("run: " + e.getMessage());
sm_logger.log(Level.SEVERE, e.getMessage(), e);
private Selector m_selector;
private CharsetDecoder m_decoder;
private CharsetEncoder m_encoder;
private static Logger sm_logger = Logger.getLogger("Server");
Thread-Per-Connection Server
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.InetSocketAddress;
import java.net.ServerSocket;
import java.net.Socket;
import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
import java.nio.CharBuffer;
import java.nio.charset.Charset;
import java.nio.charset.CharsetDecoder;
import java.nio.charset.CharsetEncoder;
import java.nio.channels.FileChannel;
import java.nio.channels.SelectionKey;
import java.nio.channels.Selector;
import java.nio.channels.ServerSocketChannel;
import java.nio.channels.SocketChannel;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
public class MultiThreadServer implements Runnable
private static int port = 80;
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
ServerSocketChannel server = ServerSocketChannel.open();
InetSocketAddress isa = new InetSocketAddress(port);
server.socket().bind(isa);
int count = 0;
while (true)
SocketChannel channel = server.accept();
System.out.println("accept: " + (++count));
MultiThreadServer worker = new MultiThreadServer(channel);
Thread thread = new Thread(worker);
thread.setDaemon(true);
thread.start();
public MultiThreadServer(SocketChannel channel) throws IOException
m_channel = channel;
public void run()
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(2048);
int bytes = 0;
try
while ((bytes = m_channel.read(buffer)) > 0)
buffer.flip();
// process buffer
buffer.clear();
System.out.println("connection closed");
m_channel.close();
catch (IOException e)
System.out.println("run: " + e.getMessage());
sm_logger.log(Level.SEVERE, e.getMessage(), e);
catch (Exception e)
System.out.println("run: " + e.getMessage());
sm_logger.log(Level.SEVERE, e.getMessage(), e);
private SocketChannel m_channel;
private static Logger sm_logger = Logger.getLogger("MultiThreadServer");
Client
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
import java.nio.*;
import java.nio.channels.*;
import java.nio.charset.*;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
public class MultiClient implements Runnable
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
if (args.length < 1)
System.out.println("usage: java MultiClient number [host]");
System.exit(1);
int number = Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
String host = (args.length == 2) ? args[1] : "localhost" ;
Thread[] threads = new Thread [number];
InetSocketAddress address = new InetSocketAddress(host, 80);
for (int i = 0; i < number; i++)
MultiClient client = new MultiClient(address, Integer.toString(i));
threads[i] = new Thread(client);
threads.setDaemon(true);
for (int i = 0; i < number; i++)
threads[i].start();
for (int i = 0; i < number; i++)
threads[i].join();
public MultiClient(InetSocketAddress address, String id)
throws InterruptedException, IOException
m_id = id;
Charset charset = Charset.forName("UTF-8");
m_decoder = charset.newDecoder();
m_encoder = charset.newEncoder();
m_channel = SocketChannel.open();
m_channel.connect(address);
if (id.equals("0"))
Socket socket = m_channel.socket();
System.out.println("SO_SNDBUF=" + socket.getSendBufferSize()
+ ",SO_TIMEOUT=" + socket.getSoTimeout()
+ ",SO_KEEPALIVE=" + socket.getKeepAlive());
byte[] buf = new byte [1024]; // bufsize = 1K
Arrays.fill(buf, (byte) m_id.charAt(0));
m_buffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(1024);
m_buffer.put(buf);
m_buffer.flip();
Thread.currentThread().sleep(50L);
public void run()
System.out.print(m_id);
try
while (true)
m_channel.write(m_buffer);
m_buffer.rewind();
Thread.currentThread().sleep(1000L);
catch (IOException ioe)
ioe.printStackTrace();
catch (InterruptedException ie)
System.err.println(ie.toString());
private String m_id;
private CharsetEncoder m_encoder;
private CharsetDecoder m_decoder;
private SocketChannel m_channel;
private ByteBuffer m_buffer;

Answer 1

{This is a crosspost. I posted this earlier today at http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jsp?forum=4&thread=319822 before I stumbled on a search phrase that located this older thread.
All follow-ups should be on haam's thread instead of mine. The important point below is that NIO select() behavior (vs. threading IO)  is [b]worse under Windows but better under Solaris. This seems fundamentally broken. }
My company sells a scalable multi-user server platform built on Java 2.
It runs under Java 1.3.1 (and 1.4.0 windows) using multiple threads for communications, and 1.4.x (unix) using NIO. We were happy to see that 1.4.1 (windows) fixed the problem drastically limiting the number of selectable ports. :-)
The bad news is that whatever the VM is doing "under the sheets" to fix the problem seems to perform very poorly in terms of CPU:
I compared connecting 500 simulated users to a Solaris 8 and a Win2K box. These users were in 25 chat rooms, each sending a chat message every 30 seconds. (There was plenty of memory on each machine. There was no swapping in either case. Clock/CPU type doesn't matter as this isn't about comparing a machine to a machine, but different load characteristics -within- a machine environment.)
                Threaded IO      NIO/Select
Solaris 1.4.1     20-30%           15- 20%
Windows 1.4.1     40-50%           95-100%Numbers are % of CPU as reported by 'top' and the Win2K task manager.
Both platforms showed the expected significant improvement in memory usage when moving from standard threaded IO to NIO.
Strangely, the Windows implementation of the VM showed a significant (and unexpected) degradation of NIO performance vs. the threaded model, whereas the Solaris VM behaved as expected: NIO outperformed threaded IO.
Our best guess is that the Selector fix in 1.4.1 is implemented in some cpu-intensive way; perhaps polling. As a result, we still can't use NIO for Wintel boxes running our server. :-( To us, Selector
is still broken.
Has anyone else seen results like this? Have we missed some configuration parameter that will fix this?
I thought the big upside of using select() was supposed to be performance. :-P
F. Randall Farmer
State Software, Inc.
http://www.statesoftware.com