Open In App

Difference between Primordial and Non-Primordial Threads

Improve
Improve
Like Article
Like
Save
Share
Report

When the operating system starts a new process, there is only one thread. This is the thread that will enter the application’s native main function, which may then spawn other threads. The “primordial thread” is the first single thread; it isn’t a formal noun, but rather a word whose meaning should be deduced from context.
It’s understandable that a freshly established thread may be altered more easily than one that was already in use when the procedure began.
When a process is formed, the Operating System kernel creates a primordial thread as the first thread.
Prior to Java SE 6, a user program had little or no control over the primordial thread properties, which could not be changed after the thread was established.
Before any program/library code gets a chance to run, the kernel creates a primordial thread. Its stack size and position may differ greatly from those of other threads started by the program.

Creating a JVM from a primordial thread and then running Java code on that thread caused a slew of issues:

  1. The executable’s PE header controls the size of the primordial thread stack on Windows. There is no mechanism for the user to adjust it dynamically. Therefore -Xss isn’t applicable to the primordial thread.
  2. The size of the primordial thread stack for Solaris/Linux is governed by ulimit -s, which is often quite big (8M). To compensate, we placed a guard page in the centre of the stack to lower the stack size artificially. This, however, may cause issues with native programmes.
  3. It’s risky to set up a guard page for the primordial thread. The primordial thread stack, unlike other threads, may increase on demand. getrlimit() informs VM of the ulimit value, which is the highest limit but not the actual stack size. What can happen is that the VM puts the guard at the theoretical limit, but because the application doesn’t need that much stack, the OS reuses the unused space (e.g. malloc) for other reasons (this won’t happen with other threads). Between the stack and its guard page, we ended up with a C heap.
  4. To check for stack overflows, the Linux VM knocks the stack address below the current SP. Because of a security mechanism built into the kernel, this will result in SEGVs if they occur in the primordial thread. The problem is solved on Linux VM by manually increasing the stack. When a VM expands the stack, however, the available stack capacity is decreased to just one page for a brief time. If a signal is given inside that window, the VM may not have enough room to handle it.
  5. For stack colouring and exec-shield, certain Linux kernels randomise the beginning stack address for every thread, but they don’t notify the application. In the primitive thread, this makes it hard to accurately identify stack position and size. The information is required by VM in order to properly manage stack overflows. We do have some cushion, which is usually sufficient, but as seen by bug reports, some do have crashes as a result of this.
  6. On Linux, there is no equivalent of the main() that can determine whether the current thread is a primordial thread, making it even more difficult to write specific code to handle the primordial thread.

It should be noted that certain numbers, such as Xss maximum, are severely limited by the Operating System, the shell’s restrictions, and the system’s current available physical and virtual memory. Xmx may not be able to completely utilise all of your free memory due to fragmentation caused by loaded shared objects or dlls in the process address space, notwithstanding the availability of physical/virtual memory. Because of the overhead associated with the Web Browser and the dlls it loads in the process address space, -Xmx1.6M may not function with the Java Plugin on Windows. 

If you want a huge heap, 64-bit platforms should be actively considered.
JNI applications that employ custom launchers might follow the same approach as this basic example :

C++




#include <jni.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
  
#include <pthread.h>
  
YourJVM\* jvm;
  
JNIEnv\* create_vm()
{
    JNIEnv\* env;
    YourJVMInitArgs args;
    YourJVMOption options[1];
  
    args.version = JNI_VERSION_1_4;
    args.nOptions = 1;
    options[0].optionString = "-Djava.class.path=.";
    args.options = options;
    args.ignoreUnrecognized = JNI_FALSE;
  
    JNI_CreateYourJVM(&jvm, (void \*\*)&env, &args);
    return env;
}
  
void invoke_class(JNIEnv\* env)
{
    jclass helloWorldClass;
    jmethodID mainMethod;
    jobjectArray applicationArgs;
    jstring applicationArg0;
    char buf[128];
  
    sprintf(buf, "%d", getpid());
  
    helloWorldClass
        = (\* env)->FindClass(env, "HelloWorld");
  
    mainMethod = (\* env)->GetStaticMethodID(
        env, helloWorldClass, "main",
        "([Ljava/lang/String;)V");
  
    applicationArgs = (\* env)->NewObjectArray(
        env, 1,
        (\* env)->FindClass(env, "java/lang/String"), NULL);
    applicationArg0 = (\* env)->NewStringUTF(env, buf);
  
    (\* env)->SetObjectArrayElement(env, applicationArgs, 0,
                                    applicationArg0);
    (\* env)->CallStaticVoidMethod(
        env, helloWorldClass, mainMethod, applicationArgs);
}
  
// VM Worker Thread
void\* dowork(void\* args)
{
    JNIEnv\* env = create_vm();
    invoke_class(env);
    // Unload the VM
    if (jvm == NULL)
        exit(-1);
  
    int retval = (\* jvm)->DetachCurrentThread(jvm);
    if (retval != 0)
        exit(2);
  
    retval = (\* jvm)->DestroyYourJVM(jvm);
    if (retval != 0)
        exit(3);
}
  
int main(int argc, char \*\* argv)
{
    pthread_t tid;
    void\* status;
  
    // Create a new thread and launch the vm in that thread
    pthread_create(&tid, NULL, dowork, NULL);
  
    // Make the primordial wait until the VM worker thread
    // exits
    pthread_join(tid, &status);
    exit(0);
}


All these count towards the difference.



Last Updated : 15 Jun, 2021
Like Article
Save Article
Previous
Next
Share your thoughts in the comments
Similar Reads