Pthreads Programming: Using POSIX Threads

Brad Nichols is a free-lance do-anything-computerish-for-a-buck kind of guy who works out of Milford, NH. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of New Hampshire in 1985 and a Master of Science degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in 1991. He started his computer career working on very hard hardware (fuel pumps and valves). He worked his way up through the hardware layers into software on projects involving embedded avionics systems at Textron Lycomming and United Technologies Hamilton Standard Division. Brad left these jobs to learn more about AI at WPI, but instead caught the Mach fever, and was introduced to threads programming in UNIX. While at WPI he also worked on an OSF/1 performance project for the Open Software Foundation (OSF). After attending WPI, Brad taught training seminars to software developers on the Mach kernel interfaces. He then joined Digital Equipment Corporation to work on the port of the OSF's Distributed Computing Environment's Distributed File System (OSFDCEDFSDU for short) to Digital UNIX. Now, Brad is once again on his own and spends most of his time teaching software engineers about technologies with much shorter acronyms -- such as Pthreads. When not working, Brad spends time at home trying to synchronize with his wife, Susan, and three little threads, Dan (who's 7), Tim (5), and Cecelia (3). And, oh yes, there's the lawn and dump things on weekends too. Dick Buttlar is a consulting writer in the UNIX Engineering Group at Digital Equipment Corporation, where he recently completed his stint as project leader for the Digital UNIX cluster documentation. He specializes in programming documentation -- both user-level and kernel -- and, in a former life, wrote the device driver documentation for the VMS operating system. A few years ago, he managed the initial planning of the corporate- wide documentation effort for Digital's Alpha processor. He's worked for Wang Laboratories, Recal/Redac, North American Technologies, and the American Trial Lawyers Association, among other places. He has a B.A. in English from Boston College and an M.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He lives in an ivory protocol tower in Nashua, NH, with his wife, Connie, and three children. He enjoys playing pirates with his son Tom; taking his daughter Maggie fishing; and listening to Rancid with his daughter Jenn. He likes nothing better than hanging out on the Maine seacoast, cooking a nice meal for himself and his wife, while hummingbirds feed outside the kitchen window, the ocean rolls in at the cove, and Miles Davis's "Flamenco Sketches" softly plays on the boombox on the counter. Jackie Farrell has been a software engineer with Digital Equipment Corporation since 1986 and is currently a principal software engineer. She currently leads development of the DCE products for Digital UNIX. Jackie has a B.S. in applied math from the University of Vermont (1986), and studied distributed computing at Cornell University (MEng degree, 1993). Her previous projects at Digital include RT-11, DECtrade, and DCE CDS development. Jackie is happily married to Bernard Farrell, also a software warrior as well as the father of three amazing children, Eleanor, Lee, and Hayley. Jackie and Bernard are soon to be parents of baby Mingzhu, who waits patiently for them in Yunnan Province, China.

Preface. Chapter 1. Why Threads? What Are Pthreads? Potential Parallelism Specifying Potential Parallelism in a Concurrent Programming Environment Parallel vs. Concurrent Programming Synchronization Who Am I? Who Are You? Terminating Thread Execution Why Use Threads Over Processes? A Structured Programming Environment Choosing Which Applications to Thread. Chapter 2. Designing Threaded Programs Suitable Tasks for Threading Models Buffering Data Between Threads Some Common Problems Performance Example: An ATM Server Example: A Matrix Multiplication Program. Chapter 3. Synchronizing Pthreads Selecting the Right Synchronization Tool Mutex Variables Condition Variables Reader/Writer Locks Synchronization in the ATM Server Thread Pools. Chapter 4. Managing Pthreads Setting Thread Attributes The pthread_once Mechanism Keys: Using Thread-Specific Data Cancellation Scheduling Pthreads Mutex Scheduling Attributes. Chapter 5. Pthreads and UNIX Threads and Signals Threadsafe Library Functions and System Calls Cancellation-Safe Library Functions and System Calls Thread-Blocking Library Functions and System Calls Threads and Process Management Multiprocessor Memory Synchronization. Chapter 6. Practical Considerations Understanding Pthreads Implementation Debugging Performance Conclusion Appendix A. Pthreads and DCE Appendix B. Pthreads Draft 4 vs. the Final Standard Appendix C. Pthreads Quick Reference Index