On Fri, Jan 27, 2006 at 08:06:59AM -0500, David Zakar wrote:
> Is there a maximum number of threads I can spawn in a program using
> pthread_create() in Linux? I've noticed that once I exceed 300 or so, it
> appears to just refuse to create new threads.
Yes, there is. IIRC, there are two limits:
1. The resources available on the system (e.g. memory): you
can't instantiate another thread if there's nowhere to put it.
2. PTHREAD_THREADS_MAX (or somesuch: I'm going from memory
so that string may have a typo or two in it), which defines
the maximum number of threads. It's defined in...umm...
probably /usr/include/bits/local_lim.h and is likely set to
8192 or 16384 or something like that -- so you _probably_
shouldn't be bumping it at 300.
My recommendation is to check the return from pthread_create()
and see what it's set to -- perhaps that'll shed some light on
which limit you're bumping into.
-Rich
