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The Java™ Tutorials
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Concurrency
Processes and Threads
Thread Objects
Defining and Starting a Thread
Pausing Execution with Sleep
Interrupts
Joins
The SimpleThreads Example
Synchronization
Thread Interference
Memory Consistency Errors
Synchronized Methods
Intrinsic Locks and Synchronization
Atomic Access
Liveness
Deadlock
Starvation and Livelock
Guarded Blocks
Immutable Objects
A Synchronized Class Example
A Strategy for Defining Immutable Objects
High Level Concurrency Objects
Lock Objects
Executors
Executor Interfaces
Thread Pools
Fork/Join
Concurrent Collections
Atomic Variables
Concurrent Random Numbers
For Further Reading
Questions and Exercises
Trail: Essential Classes
Lesson: Concurrency
Section: High Level Concurrency Objects
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# Executors

In all of the previous examples, there's a close connection between the task being done by a new thread, as defined by its `Runnable` object, and the thread itself, as defined by a `Thread` object. This works well for small applications, but in large-scale applications, it makes sense to separate thread management and creation from the rest of the application. Objects that encapsulate these functions are known as executors. The following subsections describe executors in detail.

- Executor Interfaces define the three executor object types.
- Thread Pools are the most common kind of executor implementation.
- Fork/Join is a framework (new in JDK 7) for taking advantage of multiple processors.

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