diff --git a/dmlc-core b/dmlc-core
index 4e6459b0b..1db0792e1 160000
--- a/dmlc-core
+++ b/dmlc-core
@@ -1 +1 @@
-Subproject commit 4e6459b0bc15e6cf9b315cc75e2e5495c03cd417
+Subproject commit 1db0792e1a55355b1f07699bba18c88ded996953
diff --git a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoost.scala b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoost.scala
index 5d1a05c17..a68526b17 100644
--- a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoost.scala
+++ b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoost.scala
@@ -70,6 +70,13 @@ object XGBoost extends Serializable {
        obj: ObjectiveTrait = null, eval: EvalTrait = null): XGBoostModel = {
     val numWorkers = trainingData.partitions.length
     implicit val sc = trainingData.sparkContext
+    if (configMap.contains("nthread")) {
+      val nThread = configMap("nthread")
+      val coresPerTask = sc.getConf.get("spark.task.cpus", "1")
+      require(nThread.toString <= coresPerTask,
+        s"the nthread configuration ($nThread) must be no larger than " +
+          s"spark.task.cpus ($coresPerTask)")
+    }
     val tracker = new RabitTracker(numWorkers)
     require(tracker.start(), "FAULT: Failed to start tracker")
     val boosters = buildDistributedBoosters(trainingData, configMap,
diff --git a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/test/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostSuite.scala b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/test/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostSuite.scala
index 98964f23e..21ef3f7a2 100644
--- a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/test/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostSuite.scala
+++ b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/test/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostSuite.scala
@@ -27,12 +27,12 @@ import org.apache.spark.mllib.linalg.DenseVector
 import org.apache.spark.mllib.regression.LabeledPoint
 import org.apache.spark.rdd.RDD
 import org.apache.spark.{SparkConf, SparkContext}
-import org.scalatest.{BeforeAndAfterAll, FunSuite}
+import org.scalatest.{BeforeAndAfter, FunSuite}
 
 import ml.dmlc.xgboost4j.java.{DMatrix => JDMatrix, XGBoostError}
 import ml.dmlc.xgboost4j.scala.{DMatrix, EvalTrait}
 
-class XGBoostSuite extends FunSuite with BeforeAndAfterAll {
+class XGBoostSuite extends FunSuite with BeforeAndAfter {
 
   private implicit var sc: SparkContext = null
   private val numWorker = 2
@@ -79,13 +79,13 @@ class XGBoostSuite extends FunSuite with BeforeAndAfterAll {
     }
   }
 
-  override def beforeAll(): Unit = {
+  before {
     // build SparkContext
     val sparkConf = new SparkConf().setMaster("local[*]").setAppName("XGBoostSuite")
     sc = new SparkContext(sparkConf)
   }
 
-  override def afterAll(): Unit = {
+  after {
     if (sc != null) {
       sc.stop()
     }
@@ -112,9 +112,9 @@ class XGBoostSuite extends FunSuite with BeforeAndAfterAll {
     sampleList.toList
   }
 
-  private def buildTrainingRDD(): RDD[LabeledPoint] = {
+  private def buildTrainingRDD(sparkContext: Option[SparkContext] = None): RDD[LabeledPoint] = {
     val sampleList = readFile(getClass.getResource("/agaricus.txt.train").getFile)
-    sc.parallelize(sampleList, numWorker)
+    sparkContext.getOrElse(sc).parallelize(sampleList, numWorker)
   }
 
   test("build RDD containing boosters") {
@@ -155,4 +155,21 @@ class XGBoostSuite extends FunSuite with BeforeAndAfterAll {
     val predicts = loadedXGBooostModel.predict(testSetDMatrix)
     assert(eval.eval(predicts, testSetDMatrix) < 0.1)
   }
+
+  test("nthread configuration must be equal to spark.task.cpus") {
+    // close the current Spark context
+    sc.stop()
+    sc = null
+    // start another app
+    val sparkConf = new SparkConf().setMaster("local[*]").set("spark.task.cpus", "4").
+      setAppName("test1")
+    val customSparkContext = new SparkContext(sparkConf)
+    val trainingRDD = buildTrainingRDD(Some(customSparkContext))
+    val paramMap = List("eta" -> "1", "max_depth" -> "2", "silent" -> "0",
+      "objective" -> "binary:logistic", "nthread" -> 6).toMap
+    intercept[IllegalArgumentException] {
+      XGBoost.train(trainingRDD, paramMap, 5)
+    }
+    customSparkContext.stop()
+  }
 }