3 Review(s)

For advanced Computer Science programming courses covering operating systems. The books aim is to give the programmer a solid, basic understanding of threads — what they are, how they work, why they work, why they are useful, and some of the programming issues surrounding their use. A reader should come away with a solid understanding of the fundamentals of multithreading, being able to write credible, modestly complex, threaded programs. Salient Features Focuses on the POSIX multithreading model, making comparisons to OS/2 and Win32 throughout. Contrasting POSIX API to the OS/2 and Win32 APIs gives the programmer a feeling for what kind of porting issues might be involved when writing to more than one of these libraries. Promotes MT programming as a means for writing better programs more easily, and for having programs that run faster with fewer bugs. Provides an introduction to the underlying structures upon which threads are built, the construction of the threads themselves, and the operating system support that allows efficient implementation. Details the different scheduling models and the various alternative choices that could be made. Describes context switching in detail. Delves into the details of the various POSIX options and parameters. Discusses hardware — cache architectures, interconnect topologies, atomic instructions, invalidation techniques. Includes several complete programs which are presented as examples. Details and issues of the threads used are discussed. References to other programs on the net are made. Covers the cancellation of unwanted threads.