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A Pthreads Tutorial, Written By: Andrae Muys

This document is a tutorial introduction to Pthreads, a POSIX standard API for creating and managing threads within a process. Under the traditional Unix process model, multiple processes are created using the fork() system call, which produces independent copies of the calling process. While this provides memory protection, it is inefficient for tasks that require multiple threads to work on shared data. Threads provide a more efficient alternative as they share the same memory space within a process and avoid the overhead of context switching between separate processes. Pthreads is a popular threading API that allows applications to take advantage of threads.

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47 views

A Pthreads Tutorial, Written By: Andrae Muys

This document is a tutorial introduction to Pthreads, a POSIX standard API for creating and managing threads within a process. Under the traditional Unix process model, multiple processes are created using the fork() system call, which produces independent copies of the calling process. While this provides memory protection, it is inefficient for tasks that require multiple threads to work on shared data. Threads provide a more efficient alternative as they share the same memory space within a process and avoid the overhead of context switching between separate processes. Pthreads is a popular threading API that allows applications to take advantage of threads.

Uploaded by

Winswept
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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11/28/12

A Pthreads Tutorial, written by Andrae Muys


All Unix's are multi-tasking operating systems. The process model used by unix permits a user to run multiple processes simultaneously making it one of the most powerful and flexible multi-programming models in use today. Under the traditional unix model, processes are all created in the same way, by using the fork() system call. Fork() produces a second copy of the calling process. This second copy is identical to the original, except that the return value of fork() in the child = 1, while the return value of fork() in the parent = the child's pid. So the normal use of fork() is:
[ d op a r e n ts t u f f ] p p i d=f o r k( ) ; i f( p p i d<0 ){ f o r k _ e r r o r _ f u n c t i o n( ) ; }e l s ei f( p p i d= =1 ){ c h i l d _ f u n c t i o n( ) ; }e l s e{ p a r e n t _ f u n c t i o n( ) ; }

Note that this only works because fork() returns two completely independent copies of the original process. Each process has its own address space, with its own copies of its variables, which are completely independent of the same variables in the other process (the only exception to this is with some SysV IPC variables, but these are special cases). This independence, while providing memory protection and therefore stability, causes problems when you want to have multiple processes working on the same task/problem. Yes you can use pipes or SysV IPC, but there are still serious problems. The cost of switching between multiple processes is relatively high. There are often severe limits on the number of processes the scheduler can handle efficiently. Synchronisation variables, shared between multiple processes, are typically slow. For these reasons, and others, threads or Light Weight Processes(LWP) can be very useful. Threads share a common address space, and are often scheduled internally in a process, thereby avoiding a lot of the inefficiencies of multiple processes. One very popular API for threading an application is pthreads, also known as POSIX threads, P1003.1c, or ISO/IEC 9945-1:1990c. This API is the subject of todays tutorial. <<< Contents >>> Andrae Muys

www.cs.nmsu.edu/~jcook/Tools/pthreads/pthreads.html

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