Processes blow away thread queues, for the record.

psdaisy

#!/bin/bash
# time ./test/benchmark/psdaisy
#
# real  0m0.238s
# user  0m0.095s
# sys 0m0.006s
# 
# real  0m0.323s
# user  0m0.153s
# sys 0m0.035s
#

mkdir example
cd example
ruby -e "('aa'..'dv').to_a.each {|name| puts name}" | xargs mkfifo
ruby -e '100000.times {|i| puts i }' > aa &
ruby -e "('aa'..'dv').to_a.inject(nil) {|a,b| puts '%s %s' % [a, b] if a; b }" |
while read input output
do cat "$input" > "$output" &
done
time cat dv > /dev/null
cd -
rm -r example

thrdaisy.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'thread'

queues = {}
('aa'..'dv').to_a.each do |name|
  queues[name] = Queue.new
end

threads = []
('aa'..'dv').to_a.inject(nil) do |a,b|
  if a
    iqueue = queues[a]
    oqueue = queues[b]
    threads << Thread.new do
      while obj = iqueue.pop
        oqueue.push obj
      end
    end
  end
  b
end

src = Thread.new do
  iqueue = queues['aa']
  100000.times do |i|
    iqueue.push i
  end
end

oqueue = queues['dv']
while obj = oqueue.pop
  puts obj
end

threads << src
threads.each {|thr| thr.join }