Chapter 4: Threads

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Chapter 4: Threads
 Overview
 Multicore
M lti P
Programming
i
 Multithreading Models
 Thread Libraries
 Implicit Threading
 Threading Issues
 Operating System Examples

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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
th d libraries
thread lib i
 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 ©2013
 Motivation

 Most modern applications are multithreaded

 Threads
Th d run within
ithi application
li ti
 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
heavy-weight
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 ©2013
 Multithreaded Server Architecture

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Benefits

 Responsiveness – may allow continued execution if part of

process is blocked
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 ©2013
 Multicore Programming

 Multicore or multiprocessor systems putting pressure on

programmers challenges include:
programmers,
 Dividing activities
 Balance
 Data splitting
 Data dependency
 Testing and debugging
 Parallelism implies a system can perform more than one task
simultaneouslyy
 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 ©2013
 Multicore Programming (Cont.)

 Types of parallelism
 Data
D t parallelism
ll li – distributes
di t ib t subsets
b t off the
th same data
d t
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 ©2013
 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 ©2013
 Single and Multithreaded Processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Amdahl’s Law
 Identifies performance gains from adding additional cores to an
application that has both serial and parallel components
 S is serial portion
 N processing cores

 That is, if application is 75% parallel / 25% serial, moving from 1 to 2

cores results in speedup of 1.6 times
 As N approaches infinity, speedup approaches 1 / S

Serial portion of an application has disproportionate effect on

performance gained by adding additional cores

 But does the law take into account contemporary

p y multicore systems?
y

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 User Threads and Kernel Threads

 User threads - management done by user-level threads library

 Three
Th primary
i thread
th d libraries:
lib i
 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 4.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Multithreading Models

 Many-to-One

 One-to-One

 Many-to-Many

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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
 Examples:
 Solaris Green Threads
 GNU Portable Threads

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 One-to-One
 Each user-level thread maps to kernel thread
 Creating
C ti a user-level
l l th
thread
d creates
t a kkernell th
thread
d
 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 4.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Many-to-Many Model
 Allows many user level threads to be
mapped
pp to many
y kernel threads
 Allows the operating system to create
a sufficient number of kernel threads
 Solaris
S l i prior
i tto version
i 9
 Windows with the ThreadFiber
package

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Two-level Model

 Similar to M:M, except that it allows a user thread to be

bound to kernel thread
 Examples
 IRIX
 HP-UX
 Tru64 UNIX
 Solaris 8 and earlier

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 4.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Pthreads

 May be provided either as user-level or kernel-level

 A POSIX standard
t d d (IEEE 1003.1c)
1003 1 ) API ffor th
thread
d creation
ti and
d
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,
(Solaris Linux
Linux, Mac OS X)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Pthreads Example

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Pthreads Example (Cont.)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Pthreads Code for Joining 10 Threads

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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
#p g omp
p p
parallel
Create as many threads as there are
cores
#pragma omp parallel for
for(i=0;i<N;i++) {
c[i] = a[i] + b[i];
}
Run for loop in parallel

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Scheduler Activations
 Both M:M and Two-level models require
communication to maintain the appropriate
n mber of kernel threads allocated to the
number
application
 Typically use an intermediate data structure
between user and kernel threads – lightweight
process (LWP)
 Appears
pp to be a virtual p
processor on which
process can schedule user thread to run
 Each LWP attached to kernel thread
 H
How many LWP
LWPs tto create?
t ?
 Scheduler activations provide upcalls - a
communication mechanism from the kernel to
the upcall handler in the thread library
 This communication allows an application to
maintain the correct number kernel threads

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 End of Chapter 4

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013