How to implement simple threading with a fixed number of worker threads

I think that Executors.newFixedThreadPool fits your requirements. There are a number of different ways to use the resulting ExecutorService, depending on whether you want a result returned to the main thread, or whether the task is totally self-contained, and whether you have a collection of tasks to perform up front, or whether tasks are queued in response to some event.

  Collection<YourTask> tasks = new ArrayList<YourTask>();
  YourTask yt1 = new YourTask();
  ...
  tasks.add(yt1);
  ...
  ExecutorService exec = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(5);
  List<Future<YourResultType>> results = exec.invokeAll(tasks);

Alternatively, if you have a new asynchronous task to perform in response to some event, you probably just want to use the ExecutorService’s simple execute(Runnable) method.