Chapter 4: Threads &
Concurrency
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Outline
Overview
Multicore Programming
Multithreading Models
Thread Libraries
Implicit Threading
Threading Issues
Operating System Examples
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Objectives
Identify the basic components of a thread, and contrast threads
and processes
Describe the benefits and challenges of designing
multithreaded applications
Illustrate different approaches to implicit threading including
thread pools, fork-join, and Grand Central Dispatch
Describe how the Windows and Linux operating systems
represent threads
Designing multithreaded applications using the Pthreads, Java,
and Windows threading APIs
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Motivation
Most modern applications are multithreaded
Threads run within application
Multiple tasks with the application can be implemented by
separate threads
• Update display
• Fetch data
• Spell checking
• Answer a network request
Process creation is heavy-weight while thread creation is
light-weight
Can simplify code, increase efficiency
Kernels are generally multithreaded
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Single and Multithreaded Processes
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Multithreaded Server Architecture
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Benefits
Responsiveness – may allow continued execution if part of
process is blocked, especially important for user interfaces
Resource Sharing – threads share resources of process to
which they belong, easier than shared memory or message
passing
Economy (time) – thread creation, communication and context
switching consumes less time.
Scalability – process can take advantage of multicore
architectures
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Multicore Programming
Multicore or multiprocessor systems puts pressure on programmers,
challenges include:
• Dividing activities
• Balance
• Data splitting
• Data dependency
• Testing and debugging
Parallelism implies a system can perform more than one task
simultaneously
Concurrency supports more than one task making progress
• Single processor / core, scheduler providing concurrency
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Concurrency vs. Parallelism
Concurrent execution on single-core system:
Parallelism on a multi-core system:
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Multicore Programming
Types of parallelism
• Data parallelism – distributes subsets of the same data
across multiple cores, same operation on each
• Task parallelism – distributing threads across cores, each
thread performing unique operation
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Data and Task Parallelism
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
User Threads and Kernel Threads
User threads - management done by user-level threads library
Three primary thread libraries:
• POSIX Pthreads
• Windows threads
• Java threads
Kernel threads - Supported by the Kernel
Examples – virtually all general-purpose operating systems, including:
• Windows
• Linux
• Mac OS X
• iOS
• Android
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
User and Kernel Threads
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Multithreading Models
Many-to-One
One-to-One
Many-to-Many
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Many-to-One
Many user-level threads mapped to single kernel thread
One thread blocking causes all to block
Multiple threads may not run in parallel on multicore system because
only one may be in kernel at a time
Few systems currently use this model
Examples:
• Solaris Green Threads
• GNU Portable Threads
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
One-to-One
Each user-level thread maps to kernel thread
Creating a user-level thread creates a kernel thread
More concurrency than many-to-one
Number of threads per process sometimes restricted due to overhead
Examples
• Windows
• Linux
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Many-to-Many Model
Allows many user level threads to be mapped to many kernel threads
Allows the operating system to create a sufficient number of kernel
threads
Windows with the ThreadFiber package
Otherwise not very common
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Two-level Model
Similar to M:M, except that it allows a user thread to be bound to
kernel thread
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Thread Libraries
Thread library provides programmer with API for creating and
managing threads
Two primary ways of implementing
• Library entirely in user space
Easier to create, managed by the user entirely
Many to one model
Not able to exploit multiprocessor environment
• Kernel-level library supported by the OS
Thread tables managed by the kernel
One to one model
Blocking of a thread doesn’t effect execution
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Strategies of thread creation
Synchronous
• Parent creates child threads
• Parent and child can then execute concurrently
• Used in servers and responsive user interfaces
Asynchronous
• Parent creates child threads
• Parent halts its execution and the created child threads can
execute concurrently.
• Once the child threads complete execution, they exit
• After exiting, the parent thread resumes execution.
• Used when result of various child threads need to be combined.
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Pthreads
May be provided either as user-level or kernel-level
A POSIX standard (IEEE 1003.1c) API for thread creation and
synchronization
Specification, not implementation
API specifies behavior of the thread library, implementation is up to
development of the library
Common in UNIX operating systems (Linux & Mac OS X)
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Pthreads Example
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Pthreads Example (Cont.)
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Pthreads Code for Joining 10 Threads
Operating System Concepts – 9 th Edition 4. 21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Windows Multithreaded C Program
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Windows Multithreaded C Program (Cont.)
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Java Threads
Java threads are managed by the JVM
Typically implemented using the threads model provided by underlying
OS
Java threads may be created by:
• Extending Thread class
• Implementing the Runnable interface
• Standard practice is to implement Runnable interface
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Java Threads
Implementing Runnable interface:
Creating a thread:
Waiting on a thread:
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Java Executor Framework
Rather than explicitly creating threads, Java also allows thread creation
around the Executor interface:
The Executor is used as follows:
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Java Executor Framework
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Java Executor Framework (Cont.)
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Implicit Threading
Growing in popularity as numbers of threads increase, program
correctness more difficult with explicit threads
Creation and management of threads done by compilers and run-time
libraries rather than programmers
Five methods explored
• Thread Pools
• Fork-Join
• OpenMP
• Grand Central Dispatch
• Intel Threading Building Blocks
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Thread Pools
Create a number of threads in a pool where they await work
Advantages:
• Usually slightly faster to service a request with an existing thread
than create a new thread
• Allows the number of threads in the application(s) to be bound to
the size of the pool
• Separating task to be performed from mechanics of creating task
allows different strategies for running task
i.e,Tasks could be scheduled to run periodically
Windows API supports thread pools:
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Java Thread Pools
Three factory methods for creating thread pools in Executors class:
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Java Thread Pools (Cont.)
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Fork-Join Parallelism
Multiple threads (tasks) are forked, and then joined.
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Fork-Join Parallelism
General algorithm for fork-join strategy:
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Fork-Join Parallelism
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Fork-Join Parallelism in Java
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Fork-Join Parallelism in Java
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.40 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Fork-Join Parallelism in Java
The ForkJoinTask is an abstract base class
RecursiveTask and RecursiveAction classes extend
ForkJoinTask
RecursiveTask returns a result (via the return value from the
compute() method)
RecursiveAction does not return a result
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.41 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
OpenMP
Set of compiler directives and
an API for C, C++, FORTRAN
Provides support for parallel
programming in shared-
memory environments
Identifies parallel regions –
blocks of code that can run in
parallel
#pragma omp parallel
Create as many threads as there
are cores
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.42 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Run the for loop in parallel
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.43 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Grand Central Dispatch
Apple technology for macOS and iOS operating systems
Extensions to C, C++ and Objective-C languages, API, and run-time
library
Allows identification of parallel sections
Manages most of the details of threading
Block is in “^{ }” :
ˆ{ printf("I am a block"); }
Blocks placed in dispatch queue
• Assigned to available thread in thread pool when removed from
queue
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.44 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Grand Central Dispatch
Two types of dispatch queues:
• serial – blocks removed in FIFO order, queue is per process,
called main queue
Programmers can create additional serial queues within
program
• concurrent – removed in FIFO order but several may be removed
at a time
Four system wide queues divided by quality of service:
o QOS_CLASS_USER_INTERACTIVE
o QOS_CLASS_USER_INITIATED
o QOS_CLASS_USER_UTILITY
o QOS_CLASS_USER_BACKGROUND
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.45 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Grand Central Dispatch
For the Swift language a task is defined as a closure – similar to a
block, minus the caret
Closures are submitted to the queue using the dispatch_async()
function:
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.46 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Intel Threading Building Blocks (TBB)
Template library for designing parallel C++ programs
A serial version of a simple for loop
The same for loop written using TBB with parallel_for statement:
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.47 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
End of Chapter 4
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
