Introduction In a previous post I discussed the fork/join framework introduced with Java SE 7 and how it can be used to perform simple parallelism of certain types of tasks; that is, those that operate within a single JVM and involve a large piece of work that can be broken up into smaller pieces through a divide and conquer strategy. To illustrate this, I introduced an example of using fork/join to perform a Monte Carlo simulation of the Net Present Value of an investment with uncertain profits and discount rate.

Introduction This is the first of a series of posts that will discuss an example application that uses the Java Fork/Join framework to do a Monte Carlo simulation of the Net Present Value of a prospective investment. This first post discusses the purpose of the example application as well as the purpose of the fork/join framework and the kinds of problems it can best solve. Fork/Join and Divide and Conquer The fork/join framework introduced with Java SE 7 is based on a specific model of parallel programming, similar to what is implemented in languages such as Intel’s Cilk Plus.