Thread blocking on java.nio.charset.CoderResult

Question

Hello all,
I have a multi-threaded app which does some fairly intestive string operations (basically extracts text from documents for indexing a search system).
I am seeing a massive bottleneck around the java.nio.charset.CoderResult class. When profiling, I see a whole stack of threads blocking on (waiting for) a monitor on this java.nio.charset.CoderResult class. Seems to be a result of string encoding/decoding (I am often encoding strings as UTF-8).
Anyone know why the JVM would want my threads to sync on this class? It's creating a huge performance issue for my app. Approximately 15% of ALL the processing time is spent waiting for this class.
Help!

Answer 1

I would guess that you're using some of the static methods in the CoderResult class. The static methods CoderResult.unmappableCache(), CoderResult.malformedForLength() and CoderResult.malformedCache all use a static inner class called Cache. Its get() method is synchronized on Cache.class. Since the Cache inner-class is static, any part of your multi-threaded application that goes through the Cache.get() method is going to be waiting for the lock on Cache.class.
Could you create a CoderResult instance for each thread? That would mean that there would be a different static Cache class for each thread, reducing the number of threads competing for the Cache.class lock.
I'd have to see some of your code to give a better answer.
Brian