Threads & Concurrency

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

 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

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 Multithreaded Server Architecture

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 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

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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Data and Task Parallelism

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 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 – 10th Edition 4.12 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 4.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 User and Kernel Threads

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 Multithreading Models

 Many-to-One

 One-to-One

 Many-to-Many

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 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

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 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 4.17 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

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 Two-level Model
 Similar to M:M, except that it allows a user thread to be bound to
kernel thread

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 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

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 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)

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 Pthreads Example

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 Pthreads Example (Cont.)

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Pthreads Code for Joining 10 Threads

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

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 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

• Standard practice is to implement Runnable interface

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Java Threads
Implementing Runnable interface:

Creating a thread:

Waiting on a thread:

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 Java Executor Framework

 Rather than explicitly creating threads, Java also allows thread creation
around the Executor interface:

 The Executor is used as follows:

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 4.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Java Executor Framework

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 Java Executor Framework (Cont.)

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 Fork-Join Parallelism

 Multiple threads (tasks) are forked, and then joined.

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 Fork-Join Parallelism

 General algorithm for fork-join strategy:

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 Fork-Join Parallelism

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