How to run functions in parallel?

Solution 1:

You could use threading or multiprocessing.

Due to peculiarities of CPython, threading is unlikely to achieve true parallelism. For this reason, multiprocessing is generally a better bet.

Here is a complete example:

from multiprocessing import Process

def func1():
  print 'func1: starting'
  for i in xrange(10000000): pass
  print 'func1: finishing'

def func2():
  print 'func2: starting'
  for i in xrange(10000000): pass
  print 'func2: finishing'

if __name__ == '__main__':
  p1 = Process(target=func1)
  p1.start()
  p2 = Process(target=func2)
  p2.start()
  p1.join()
  p2.join()

The mechanics of starting/joining child processes can easily be encapsulated into a function along the lines of your runBothFunc:

def runInParallel(*fns):
  proc = []
  for fn in fns:
    p = Process(target=fn)
    p.start()
    proc.append(p)
  for p in proc:
    p.join()

runInParallel(func1, func2)

Solution 2:

If your functions are mainly doing I/O work (and less CPU work) and you have Python 3.2+, you can use a ThreadPoolExecutor:

from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor

def run_io_tasks_in_parallel(tasks):
    with ThreadPoolExecutor() as executor:
        running_tasks = [executor.submit(task) for task in tasks]
        for running_task in running_tasks:
            running_task.result()

run_io_tasks_in_parallel([
    lambda: print('IO task 1 running!'),
    lambda: print('IO task 2 running!'),
])

If your functions are mainly doing CPU work (and less I/O work) and you have Python 2.6+, you can use the multiprocessing module:

from multiprocessing import Process

def run_cpu_tasks_in_parallel(tasks):
    running_tasks = [Process(target=task) for task in tasks]
    for running_task in running_tasks:
        running_task.start()
    for running_task in running_tasks:
        running_task.join()

run_cpu_tasks_in_parallel([
    lambda: print('CPU task 1 running!'),
    lambda: print('CPU task 2 running!'),
])

Solution 3:

This can be done elegantly with Ray, a system that allows you to easily parallelize and distribute your Python code.

To parallelize your example, you'd need to define your functions with the @ray.remote decorator, and then invoke them with .remote.

import ray

ray.init()

dir1 = 'C:\\folder1'
dir2 = 'C:\\folder2'
filename = 'test.txt'
addFiles = [25, 5, 15, 35, 45, 25, 5, 15, 35, 45]

# Define the functions. 
# You need to pass every global variable used by the function as an argument.
# This is needed because each remote function runs in a different process,
# and thus it does not have access to the global variables defined in 
# the current process.
@ray.remote
def func1(filename, addFiles, dir):
    # func1() code here...

@ray.remote
def func2(filename, addFiles, dir):
    # func2() code here...

# Start two tasks in the background and wait for them to finish.
ray.get([func1.remote(filename, addFiles, dir1), func2.remote(filename, addFiles, dir2)])

If you pass the same argument to both functions and the argument is large, a more efficient way to do this is using ray.put(). This avoids the large argument to be serialized twice and to create two memory copies of it:

largeData_id = ray.put(largeData)

ray.get([func1(largeData_id), func2(largeData_id)])

Important - If func1() and func2() return results, you need to rewrite the code as follows:

ret_id1 = func1.remote(filename, addFiles, dir1)
ret_id2 = func2.remote(filename, addFiles, dir2)
ret1, ret2 = ray.get([ret_id1, ret_id2])

There are a number of advantages of using Ray over the multiprocessing module. In particular, the same code will run on a single machine as well as on a cluster of machines. For more advantages of Ray see this related post.

How to run functions in parallel?

Solution 1:

Solution 2:

Solution 3:

Related

Recent Posts