Topic 4

(Textbook - Chapter 4)
Threads

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

 Chapter 4: Threads
 Overview
 Multicore Programming
 Multithreading Models
 Thread Libraries
 Threading Issues

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 examine issues related to multithreaded
programming

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
 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

multicore systems?
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.11 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 4.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multithreading Models

 Many-to-One

 One-to-One

 Many-to-Many

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.13 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
 Examples:
 Solaris Green Threads
 GNU Portable Threads

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.14 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 4.15 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 4.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 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
 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 4.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Pthreads Example

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

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

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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Windows Multithreaded C Program

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Windows Multithreaded C Program (Cont.)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Java Multithreaded Program

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Java Multithreaded Program (Cont.)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 9th Edition 4.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 9th Edition 4.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 9th Edition 4.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 9th Edition 4.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 9th Edition 4.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 9th Edition 4.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Thread-Local Storage

 Thread-local storage (TLS) allows each thread to

have its own copy of data
 Useful when you do not have control over the
thread creation process (i.e., when using a thread
pool)
 Different from local variables
 Local variables visible only during single
function invocation
 TLS visible across function invocations
 Similar to static data
 TLS is unique to each thread

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Scheduler Activations
 Both M:M and Two-level models
require communication to maintain
the appropriate number of kernel
threads allocated to the application
 Typically use an intermediate data
structure between user and kernel
threads – lightweight process (LWP)
 Appears to be a virtual processor
on which process can schedule
user thread to run
 Each LWP attached to kernel
thread
 How many LWPs to create?
 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
Operating System Concepts – 9 Edition
th 4.35
correct Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 End of Chapter 4

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