Chapter 4: Threads &

Concurrency

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Chapter 4: Threads
 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 designng
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
 Design 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, 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 multicore
architectures

 Reference:
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/operating_system/os_multi_t
hreading.htm

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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 – 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

 Reference:
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/data-parallelism-vs-task-parall
elism

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

Reference:
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/operating_system/os_multi_threading.htm

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 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 – 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
 Kernel-level library supported by the OS

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.19 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 4.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Pthreads Example

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Pthreads Example (cont)

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Pthreads Code for Joining 10 Threads

perating System Concepts – 9 th Edition 4. 21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Threading Issues
 Semantics of fork() and exec() system calls
 Signal handling
 Synchronous and asynchronous
 Thread cancellation of target thread
 Asynchronous or deferred
 Thread-local storage
 Scheduler Activations

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Semantics of fork() and exec()

 Does fork()duplicate only the calling thread or all

threads?
 Some UNIXes have two versions of fork
 exec() usually works as normal – replace the running
process including all threads

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Signal Handling
 Signals are used in UNIX systems to notify a process that a
particular event has occurred.
 A signal handler is used to process signals
1. Signal is generated by particular event
2. Signal is delivered to a process
3. Signal is handled by one of two signal handlers:
1. default
2. user-defined
 Every signal has default handler that kernel runs when
handling signal
 User-defined signal handler can override default
 For single-threaded, signal delivered to process

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Signal Handling (Cont.)
 Where should a signal be delivered for multi-threaded?
 Deliver the signal to the thread to which the signal
applies
 Deliver the signal to every thread in the process
 Deliver the signal to certain threads in the process
 Assign a specific thread to receive all signals for the
process

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Thread Cancellation
 Terminating a thread before it has finished
 Thread to be canceled is target thread
 Two general approaches:
 Asynchronous cancellation terminates the target thread
immediately
 Deferred cancellation allows the target thread to periodically
check if it should be cancelled
 Pthread code to create and cancel a thread:

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Thread Cancellation (Cont.)
 Invoking thread cancellation requests cancellation, but actual
cancellation depends on thread state

 If thread has cancellation disabled, cancellation remains pending

until thread enables it
 Default type is deferred
 Cancellation only occurs when thread reaches cancellation
point
 I.e. pthread_testcancel()
 Then cleanup handler is invoked
 On Linux systems, thread cancellation is handled through signals

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Thread Cancellation in Java
 Deferred cancellation uses the interrupt() method, which sets the
interrupted status of a thread.

 A thread can then check to see if it has been interrupted:

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 End of Chapter 4

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018