Chapter 4: Threads

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Chapter 4: Threads
 Overview
 Multicore Programming
 Multithreading Models
 Thread Libraries
 Implicit Threading
 Threading Issues
 Operating System Examples

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Objectives
 To introduce the notion of a thread—a fundamental
unit of CPU utilization that forms the basis of
multithreaded computer systems
 To discuss the APIs for the Pthreads, Windows,
and Java thread libraries
 To explore several strategies that provide implicit
threading
 To examine issues related to multithreaded
programming
 To cover operating system support for threads in
Windows and Linux

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 9th Edition 4.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multithreaded Server Architecture

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Benefits

 Responsiveness – may allow continued execution if

part of process is blocked, especially important for
user interfaces
 Resource Sharing – threads share resources of
process, easier than shared memory or message
passing
 Economy – cheaper than process creation, thread
switching lower overhead than context switching
 Scalability – process can take advantage of
multiprocessor architectures

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multicore Programming

 Multicore or multiprocessor systems putting 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 – 9th Edition 4.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multicore Programming (Cont.)

 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
 As # of threads grows, so does architectural support
for threading
 CPUs have cores as well as hardware threads
 Consider Oracle SPARC T4 with 8 cores, and 8
hardware threads per core

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Concurrency vs. Parallelism
 Concurrent execution on single-core system:

 Parallelism on a multi-core system:

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Single and Multithreaded Processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 Solaris
 Linux
 Tru64 UNIX
 Mac OS X

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multithreading Models

 Many-to-One

 One-to-One

 Many-to-Many

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 muticore system
because only one may be in
kernel at a time
 Few systems currently use this
model
 Example:
 Solaris Green Threads

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 Solaris 9 and later

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 Solaris prior to version 9
 Windows with the ThreadFiber
package

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Thread Libraries

 Thread library provides programmer with API

for creating and managing threads
 Two primary ways of implementing
 Library entirely in user space
 Kernel-level library supported by the OS

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 (Solaris, Linux,
Mac OS X)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne