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Operating Systems 7

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8 views18 pages

Operating Systems 7

Uploaded by

hussainmalaika36
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Operating System

Lecture # 7
Thread Concept
A thread is a “lightweight” process
which executes within the address
space of a process.
A thread can be scheduled to run on
a CPU as an independent unit and
terminate.
Multiple threads can run
simultaneously.
Thread Concept
Threads have their own
Thread ID
CPU context (PC, SP, register set,
etc.)
Stack
Priority
errno
Thread Concept
Threads share
Code and data
Open files
Current working directory
User and group IDs
Signal setups and handlers
PCB
Single and Multithreaded
Processes
Threads are Similar to
Processes
A thread can be in states similar to
a process (new, ready, running,
blocked, terminated)
A thread can create another thread
Threads are Different from
Processes
Multiple threads can operate within
the same address space
No “automatic” protection
mechanism is in place for threads—
they are meant to help each other
Advantages of Threads
Responsiveness
Multi-threaded servers (e.g.,
browsers) can allow interaction
with user while a thread is
formulating response to a
previous user query (e.g.,
rendering a web page)
Advantages of Threads
Resource sharing
Process resources (code, data,
etc.)
OS resources (PCB, PPFDT, etc.)
Advantages of Threads
Economy
Take less time to create, schedule,
and terminate
Solaris 2: thread creation is 30
times faster than process creation
and thread switching is five times
faster than process switching
Advantages of Threads
Performance in multi-processor
and multi-threaded architectures
(e.g., Intel’s P4 HT)
Multiple threads can run
simultaneously
Disadvantages of Threads

Resource sharing—
synchronization needed
between threads
Difficult to write and debug
multi-threaded programs
Single-Threaded Process
main()
{ Thread
…
f1(…);
… f1
f2(…);
…
}
f2
f1(…)
{ … }
f2(…)
{ … } Process
Terminated
Multi-Threaded Process
main()
{ Process Address Space
…
thread(t1,f1); main t1 t2
…
thread(t2,f2); PC
…
PC
}
f1(…) PC
{ … }
f2(…)
{ … }
User Threads
Thread management done by user-
level threads libraries
 Kernel not aware of threads
 CPU not interrupted during thread
switching
 A system call by a thread blocks the
whole process
 Fair scheduling: P1 has one thread and
P2 has 100 threads
User Threads
Examples
POSIX Pthreads
Mach C-threads
Solaris 2 threads
Kernel Threads
Thread management done by
kernel
Kernel aware of threads
CPU switched during context
switching
A system call does not block the
whole process
Fair scheduling: P1 has one thread
and P2 has 100
Kernel Threads
Examples
Windows NT/2000
Solaris 2
Linux

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