Threads

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition, Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Motivation
 Context switch time was a bottleneck and needed new
structures to avoid it if possible

 Previously we assumed a process had a single thread

of control

 If the process has multiple threads of control, it can do

more than one task at a time

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Motivation
 Modern OS allow a process to have multiple threads of control

 A thread is a lightweight* process

 Threads are the entities scheduled for execution on the CPU

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 A process model has two concepts:
1. Resource grouping
2. Execution
 Sometimes it is useful to separate them

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Distinguish between the two concepts
Address
space/Global
Variables Open
files
Child processes
Accounting info
Signal handlers
Program counter
Registers In case of multiple
Stack threads per process

Unit of Resource StateSplit Unit of Dispatch

Program counter
Address
Registers
space/Global Program counter
Variables Open files Sta ck
Registers
Child processes te
S tac Program counter
Accounting info Sta
Sk Registers
SSyisgtemnCaonl cehptas –n8 d
Operating t h
tate Stack State

l eitiorns
Share
E d

4.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009

 Overview- Threads
 A thread is a basic unit of CPU utilization
 A thread consists of :
 A thread id
 A program counter
 A register set
 A stack
 It shares with other threads in the same process;
 Its code section
 Data section
 Other OS resources such as open files and signals
 A traditional (or heavyweight ) process has a single thread
 A Multithreaded process can perform more than one task at a time

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Single and Multithreaded Processes

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Multithreaded Server Architecture

When a server receives a message it services the

message using a separate thread, allowing it to service
concurrent requests.

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Benefits
 Responsiveness
 allows a program to continue running even if part of it is blocked,
increasing responsiveness to user
 Resource Sharing
 Threads share memory by default
 Benefit of sharing code and data – can have several different threads of
activity in same address space
 Economy
 Threads share resources (30 times faster than creating new proceseses
and five times faster than a context switch in Solaris)

 Scalability
 Single threaded processes run on one CPU; multithreaded processes can
run in parallel on several CPUs in a multiprocessor machine

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Multicore Programming

 Multicore or multiprocessor systems puts 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
 Concurrency vs. Parallelism

 Concurrent execution on single-core system:

 Parallelism on a multi-core system:

 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
Data and Task Parallelism
 User Threads
 Threads are either user threads or kernel threads
 User threads managed without kernel support in user space

 Thread management done by user-level threads library

 Library provides for thread creation, scheduling, and management with
no support from the kernel.
 User-level threads are generally fast to create and manage.

 Three primary thread libraries:

 POSIX Pthreads (We will work with this)
 Win32 threads
 Java threads

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Kernel Threads
 Supported by the Kernel
 Kernel threads supported/managed by the OS itself.
 The kernel performs thread creation, scheduling, and management in
kernel space.
 Because thread management is done by the OS, kernel threads are
generally slower to create and manage than are user threads.
 Kernel-level threads are especially good for applications that frequently
block.
 Examples
 Windows XP/2000
 Solaris
 Linux
 Tru64 UNIX
 Mac OS X

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Multithreading Models
 A relationship must exist between user and kernel threads

 Many-to-One – maps many user threads to one kernel thread –blocks entire
process when one thread blocks ( Solaris)

 One-to-One – maps each user thread to a kernel thread- provides more

concurrency by allowing another thread to run when one is blocked. Each
user thread requires a kernel thread – extra overhead. (Linux)

 Many-to-Many – multiplexes many user threads to smaller or equal

number of kernel threads, which are often specific to a particular application
or machine. Developers can create many threads and they can run in
parallel on a multiprocessor. When one thread is blocked the kernel
schedules another to run.

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Many-to-One
 Many user-level threads mapped to single kernel thread
 Examples:
 Solaris Green Threads
 GNU Portable Threads

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 One-to-One
 Each user-level thread maps to kernel thread
 Examples
 Windows NT/XP/2000
 Linux
 Solaris 9 and later

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 NT/2000 with the ThreadFiber package

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 – 8th Edition 4.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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
 Main thread libraries:
 POSIX Pthreads
 Win32
 Java

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Threading Issues

 Semantics of fork() and exec() system calls

 Thread cancellation of target thread
 Asynchronous or deferred
 Signal handling
 Thread pools
 Thread-specific data
 Scheduler activations

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Semantics of fork() and exec()
 Does fork() duplicate only the calling thread or all threads?
 Some Unix systems have two versions; one duplicates all threads and one
duplicates only the thread that invoked the fork() system call.
 Which version is used depends on the application
 If a thread invokes exec() the program specified in the parameter will
replace the entire process and all its threads.
 When exec() follows a call to fork(), there is no need to duplicate all threads
since the entire program will be replaced.

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Thread Cancellation

 Terminating a thread before it has finished

 Example: two threads are searching a database and one returns a result-
the other can be cancelled.
 A thread to be cancelled is called a 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
 Difficulties arise if resources have been allocated to the cancelled thread
or if it in the midst of updating data it shares with other threads.

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Signal Handling
 Signals are used in UNIX systems to notify a process that a
particular event has occurred. A signal may be either synchronous
or asynchronous.
 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
 Handling multithreaded signals
 Options:
 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 – 8th Edition 4.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Thread Pools
 Create a number of threads in a pool where they await work
 Advantages:
 Usually slightly faster to service a request with an existing thread
than create a new thread
 Allows the number of threads in the application(s) to be bound to
the size of the pool

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Thread Specific Data
 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)

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Scheduler Activations
 Both M:M and Two-level models require communication to maintain
the appropriate number of kernel threads allocated to the application
 Scheduler activations provide upcalls - a communication mechanism
from the kernel to the thread library
 This communication allows an application to maintain the correct
number kernel threads

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 An example of thread!
int main()
{
pthread_t tid;

pthread_create(&tid, NULL, thread, NULL);

exit(0);
}

// thread routine
void *thread(void *vargp)
{
printf("Hello, world!\n");

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 4.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009