Clarify the behavior of @threads for (#44168)

* Clarify the behavior of `@threads for`

Co-authored-by: Ian Butterworth <[email protected]>

Author: tkf

base/threadingconstructs.jl

@@ -99,46 +99,82 @@ end
 """
     Threads.@threads [schedule] for ... end
 
-A macro to parallelize a `for` loop to run with multiple threads. Splits the iteration
-space among multiple tasks and runs those tasks on threads according to a scheduling
-policy.
-A barrier is placed at the end of the loop which waits for all tasks to finish
-execution.
-
-The `schedule` argument can be used to request a particular scheduling policy.
-
-Except for `:static` scheduling, how the iterations are assigned to tasks, and how the tasks
-are assigned to the worker threads is undefined. The exact assignments can be different
-for each execution. The scheduling option is a hint. The loop body code (including any code
-transitively called from it) must not make assumptions about the distribution of iterations
-to tasks or the worker thread in which they are executed. The loop body for each iteration
-must be able to make forward progress independent of other iterations and be free from data
-races. As such, synchronizations across iterations may deadlock.
+A macro to execute a `for` loop in parallel. The iteration space is distributed to
+coarse-grained tasks. This policy can be specified by the `schedule` argument. The
+execution of the loop waits for the evaluation of all iterations.
+
+See also: [`@spawn`](@ref Threads.@spawn) and
+`pmap` in [`Distributed`](@ref man-distributed).
+
+# Extended help
+
+## Semantics
+
+Unless stronger guarantees are specified by the scheduling option, the loop executed by
+`@threads` macro have the following semantics.
+
+The `@threads` macro executes the loop body in an unspecified order and potentially
+concurrently. It does not specify the exact assignments of the tasks and the worker threads.
+The assignments can be different for each execution. The loop body code (including any code
+transitively called from it) must not make any assumptions about the distribution of
+iterations to tasks or the worker thread in which they are executed. The loop body for each
+iteration must be able to make forward progress independent of other iterations and be free
+from data races. As such, invalid synchronizations across iterations may deadlock while
+unsynchronized memory accesses may result in undefined behavior.
 
 For example, the above conditions imply that:
 
 - The lock taken in an iteration *must* be released within the same iteration.
 - Communicating between iterations using blocking primitives like `Channel`s is incorrect.
-- Write only to locations not shared across iterations (unless a lock or atomic operation is used).
+- Write only to locations not shared across iterations (unless a lock or atomic operation is
+  used).
+- The value of [`threadid()`](@ref Threads.threadid) may change even within a single
+  iteration.
 
-Schedule options are:
-- `:dynamic` (default) will schedule iterations dynamically to available worker threads,
-            assuming that the workload for each iteration is uniform.
-- `:static` creates one task per thread and divides the iterations equally among
-            them, assigning each task specifically to each thread.
-            Specifying `:static` is an error if used from inside another `@threads` loop
-            or from a thread other than 1.
+## Schedulers
 
-Without the scheduler argument, the exact scheduling is unspecified and varies across Julia releases.
+Without the scheduler argument, the exact scheduling is unspecified and varies across Julia
+releases. Currently, `:dynamic` is used when the scheduler is not specified.
 
 !!! compat "Julia 1.5"
     The `schedule` argument is available as of Julia 1.5.
 
+### `:dynamic` (default)
+
+`:dynamic` scheduler executes iterations dynamically to available worker threads. Current
+implementation assumes that the workload for each iteration is uniform. However, this
+assumption may be removed in the future.
+
+This scheduling option is merely a hint to the underlying execution mechanism. However, a
+few properties can be expected. The number of `Task`s used by `:dynamic` scheduler is
+bounded by a small constant multiple of the number of available worker threads
+([`nthreads()`](@ref Threads.nthreads)). Each task processes contiguous regions of the
+iteration space. Thus, `@threads :dynamic for x in xs; f(x); end` is typically more
+efficient than `@sync for x in xs; @spawn f(x); end` if `length(xs)` is significantly
+larger than the number of the worker threads and the run-time of `f(x)` is relatively
+smaller than the cost of spawning and synchronizaing a task (typically less than 10
+microseconds).
+
 !!! compat "Julia 1.8"
     The `:dynamic` option for the `schedule` argument is available and the default as of Julia 1.8.
 
-For example, an illustration of the different scheduling strategies where `busywait`
-is a non-yielding timed loop that runs for a number of seconds.
+### `:static`
+
+`:static` scheduler creates one task per thread and divides the iterations equally among
+them, assigning each task specifically to each thread. In particular, the value of
+[`threadid()`](@ref Threads.threadid) is guranteed to be constant within one iteration.
+Specifying `:static` is an error if used from inside another `@threads` loop or from a
+thread other than 1.
+
+!!! note
+    `:static` scheduling exists for supporting transition of code written before Julia 1.3.
+    In newly written library functions, `:static` scheduling is discouraged because the
+    functions using this option cannot be called from arbitrary worker threads.
+
+## Example
+
+To illustrate of the different scheduling strategies, consider the following function
+`busywait` containing a non-yielding timed loop that runs for a given number of seconds.
 
 ```julia-repl
 julia> function busywait(seconds)
@@ -166,10 +202,6 @@ julia> @time begin
 
 The `:dynamic` example takes 2 seconds since one of the non-occupied threads is able
 to run two of the 1-second iterations to complete the for loop.
-
-See also: [`@spawn`](@ref Threads.@spawn), [`nthreads()`](@ref Threads.nthreads),
-[`threadid()`](@ref Threads.threadid), `pmap` in [`Distributed`](@ref man-distributed),
-`BLAS.set_num_threads` in [`LinearAlgebra`](@ref man-linalg).
 """
 macro threads(args...)
     na = length(args)