Multithreaded Programming With PThreads  (English, Paperback, Lewis Bil)

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.