Threads &
CHAPTER
4
Concurrency
Practice Exercises
4.1 Provide three programming examples in which multithreading provides
better performance than a single-threaded solution.
Answer:
a. A web server that services each request in a separate thread
b. A parallelized application such as matrix multiplication where
various parts of the matrix can be worked on in parallel
c. An interactive GUI program such as a debugger where one thread is
used to monitor user input, another thread represents the running
application, and a third thread monitors performance
4.2 Using Amdahl’s Law, calculate the speedup gain of an application that
has a 60 percent parallel component for (a) two processing cores and (b)
four processing cores.
Answer:
a. With two processing cores we get a speedup of 1.42 times.
b. With four processing cores, we get a speedup of 1.82 times.
4.3 Does the multithreaded web server described in Section 4.1 exhibit task
or data parallelism?
Answer:
Data parallelism. Each thread is performing the same task, but on differ-
ent data.
4.4 What are two differences between user-level threads and kernel-level
threads? Under what circumstances is one type better than the other?
Answer:
a. User-level threads are unknown by the kernel, whereas the kernel
is aware of kernel threads.
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b. On systems using either many-to-one or many-to-many model
mapping, user threads are scheduled by the thread library, and the
kernel schedules kernel threads.
c. Kernel threads need not be associated with a process, whereas
every user thread belongs to a process. Kernel threads are generally
more expensive to maintain than user threads, as they must be
represented with a kernel data structure.
4.5 Describe the actions taken by a kernel to context-switch between kernel-
level threads.
Answer:
Context switching between kernel threads typically requires saving the
value of the CPU registers from the thread being switched out and restor-
ing the CPU registers of the new thread being scheduled.
4.6 What resources are used when a thread is created? How do they differ
from those used when a process is created?
Answer:
Because a thread is smaller than a process, thread creation typically
uses fewer resources than process creation. Creating a process requires
allocating a process control block (PCB), a rather large data structure.
The PCB includes a memory map, a list of open files, and environment
variables. Allocating and managing the memory map is typically the
most time-consuming activity. Creating either a user thread or a kernel
thread involves allocating a small data structure to hold a register set,
stack, and priority.
4.7 Assume that an operating system maps user-level threads to the kernel
using the many-to-many model and that the mapping is done through
LWPs. Furthermore, the system allows developers to create real-time
threads for use in real-time systems. Is it necessary to bind a real-time
thread to an LWP? Explain.
Answer:
Yes. Timing is crucial to real-time applications. If a thread is marked as
real-time but is not bound to an LWP, the thread may have to wait to
be attached to an LWP before running. Consider a situation in which a
real-time thread is running (is attached to an LWP) and then proceeds
to block (must perform I/O, has been preempted by a higher-priority
real-time thread, is waiting for a mutual exclusion lock, etc.). While the
real-time thread is blocked, the LWP it was attached to is assigned to
another thread. When the real-time thread has been scheduled to run
again, it must first wait to be attached to an LWP. By binding an LWP to
a real-time thread, you are ensuring that the thread will be able to run
with minimal delay once it is scheduled.
