Chapter 4: Threads & Concurrency: Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018 Operating System Concepts - 10 Edition

Chapter 4: Threads &
Concurrency
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

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
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
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
Single and Multithreaded Processes
Multithreaded Server Architecture
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
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
Concurrency vs. Parallelism
 Concurrent execution on single-core system:
 Parallelism on a multi-core system:
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
Data and Task Parallelism
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?
Amdahl’s Law
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
User and Kernel Threads
Multithreading Models
 Many-to-One
 One-to-One
 Many-to-Many
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
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
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
Two-level Model
 Similar to M:M, except that it allows a user thread to be
bound to kernel thread
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
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)
Pthreads Example
Pthreads Example (Cont.)
Pthreads Code for Joining 10 Threads
perating System Concepts – 9 th Edition 4. 21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Windows Multithreaded C Program
Windows Multithreaded C Program (Cont.)
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
Java Threads
Implementing Runnable interface:
Creating a thread:
Waiting on a thread:
Java Executor Framework
 Rather than explicitly creating threads, Java also allows

thread creation around the Executor interface:
 The Executor is used as follows:
Java Executor Framework
Java Executor Framework (Cont.)
Implicit Threading
 Growing in popularity as numbers of threads increase,

program correctness more difficult with explicit threads
 Creation and management of threads done by compilers
and run-time libraries rather than programmers
 Five methods explored
• Thread Pools
• Fork-Join
• OpenMP
• Grand Central Dispatch
• Intel Threading Building Blocks
Thread Pools
 Create a number of threads in a pool where they await
work
 Advantages:
• Usually slightly faster to service a request with an
existing thread than create a new thread
• Allows the number of threads in the application(s) to
be bound to the size of the pool
• Separating task to be performed from mechanics of
creating task allows different strategies for running
task
 i.e.,Tasks could be scheduled to run periodically
 Windows API supports thread pools:
Java Thread Pools
 Three factory methods for creating thread pools in

Executors class:
Java Thread Pools (Cont.)
Fork-Join Parallelism
 Multiple threads (tasks) are forked, and then joined.
 General algorithm for fork-join strategy:
Fork-Join Parallelism in Java
 The ForkJoinTask is an abstract base class

 RecursiveTask and RecursiveAction classes extend
ForkJoinTask
 RecursiveTask returns a result (via the return value from
the compute() method)
 RecursiveAction does not return a result
OpenMP
 Set of compiler
directives and an API
for C, C++, FORTRAN
 Provides support for
parallel programming in
shared-memory
environments
 Identifies parallel regions
– blocks of code that
can run in parallel
#pragma omp parallel
Create as many threads as
there are cores
 Run the for loop in parallel
 Apple technology for macOS and iOS operating systems
 Extensions to C, C++ and Objective-C languages, API, and
run-time library
 Allows identification of parallel sections
 Manages most of the details of threading
 Block is in “^{ }” :
ˆ{ printf("I am a block"); }
 Blocks placed in dispatch queue

• Assigned to available thread in thread pool when
removed from queue
 Two types of dispatch queues:
• serial – blocks removed in FIFO order, queue is per
process, called main queue
 Programmers can create additional serial queues
within program
• concurrent – removed in FIFO order but several may
be removed at a time
 Four system wide queues divided by quality of
service:
o QOS_CLASS_USER_INTERACTIVE
o QOS_CLASS_USER_INITIATED
o QOS_CLASS_USER_UTILITY
o QOS_CLASS_USER_BACKGROUND
 For the Swift language a task is defined as a closure –

similar to a block, minus the caret
 Closures are submitted to the queue using the
dispatch_async() function:
Intel Threading Building Blocks (TBB)
 Template library for designing parallel C++ programs

 A serial version of a simple for loop
 The same for loop written using TBB with parallel_for

statement:
Threading Issues
 Semantics of fork() and exec() system calls
 Signal handling
• Synchronous and asynchronous
 Thread cancellation of target thread
• Asynchronous or deferred
 Thread-local storage
 Scheduler Activations
Semantics of fork() and exec()
 Does fork()duplicate only the calling thread or all

threads?
• Some UNIXes have two versions of fork
 exec() usually works as normal – replace the running
process including all threads
Signal Handling
 Signals are used in UNIX systems to notify a process that
a particular event has occurred.
 A signal handler is used to process signals
1. Signal is generated by particular event
2. Signal is delivered to a process
3. Signal is handled by one of two signal handlers:
1. default
2. user-defined
 Every signal has default handler that kernel runs when
handling signal
• User-defined signal handler can override default
• For single-threaded, signal delivered to process
Signal Handling (Cont.)
 Where should a signal be delivered for multi-threaded?
• Deliver the signal to the thread to which the signal
applies
• Deliver the signal to every thread in the process
• Deliver the signal to certain threads in the process
• Assign a specific thread to receive all signals for the
process
Thread Cancellation
 Terminating a thread before it has finished
 Thread to be canceled is target thread
 Two general approaches:
• Asynchronous cancellation terminates the target
thread immediately
• Deferred cancellation allows the target thread to
periodically check if it should be cancelled
 Pthread code to create and cancel a thread:
Thread Cancellation (Cont.)
 Invoking thread cancellation requests cancellation, but
actual cancellation depends on thread state
 If thread has cancellation disabled, cancellation remains

pending until thread enables it
 Default type is deferred
• Cancellation only occurs when thread reaches
cancellation point
 i.e., pthread_testcancel()
 Then cleanup handler is invoked
 On Linux systems, thread cancellation is handled
through signals
Thread Cancellation in Java
 Deferred cancellation uses the interrupt() method,

which sets the interrupted status of a thread.
 A thread can then check to see if it has been interrupted:
Thread-Local Storage
 Thread-local storage (TLS) allows each thread to have its

own copy of data
 Useful when you do not have control over the thread
creation process (i.e., when using a thread pool)
 Different from local variables
• Local variables visible only during single function
invocation
• TLS visible across function invocations
 Similar to static data
• TLS is unique to each thread
Scheduler Activations
 Both M:M and Two-level models
require communication to maintain
the appropriate number of kernel
threads allocated to the application
 Typically use an intermediate data
structure between user and kernel
threads – lightweight process (LWP)
• Appears to be a virtual processor
on which process can schedule
user thread to run
• Each LWP attached to kernel
thread
• How many LWPs to create?
 Scheduler activations provide upcalls -
a communication mechanism from
the kernel to the upcall handler in the
thread library
 This communication allows an
application to maintain the
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition4.57
correct Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
Operating System Examples
 Windows Threads
 Linux Threads
Windows Threads
 Windows API – primary API for Windows applications
 Implements the one-to-one mapping, kernel-level
 Each thread contains
• A thread id
• Register set representing state of processor
• Separate user and kernel stacks for when thread runs
in user mode or kernel mode
• Private data storage area used by run-time libraries
and dynamic link libraries (DLLs)
 The register set, stacks, and private storage area are
known as the context of the thread
Windows Threads (Cont.)
 The primary data structures of a thread include:
• ETHREAD (executive thread block) – includes pointer
to process to which thread belongs and to KTHREAD,
in kernel space
• KTHREAD (kernel thread block) – scheduling and
synchronization info, kernel-mode stack, pointer to
TEB, in kernel space
• TEB (thread environment block) – thread id, user-
mode stack, thread-local storage, in user space
Windows Threads Data Structures
Linux Threads
 Linux refers to them as tasks rather than threads
 Thread creation is done through clone() system call
 clone() allows a child task to share the address space
of the parent task (process)
• Flags control behavior
 struct task_struct points to process data structures

(shared or unique)
End of Chapter 4
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

Chapter 4: Threads & Concurrency: Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018 Operating System Concepts - 10 Edition

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Chapter 4: Threads &

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

 Identify the basic components of a thread, and

 Most modern applications are multithreaded

 Responsiveness – may allow continued execution if

 Parallelism on a multi-core system:

 That is, if application is 75% parallel / 25% serial, moving

Serial portion of an application has disproportionate

 But does the law take into account contemporary

 User threads - management done by user-level threads

 Many user-level threads mapped to single kernel thread

 Each user-level thread maps to kernel thread

 Thread library provides programmer with API for creating

 May be provided either as user-level or kernel-level

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

 Java threads are managed by the JVM

• Standard practice is to implement Runnable interface

 Rather than explicitly creating threads, Java also allows

 The Executor is used as follows:

 Growing in popularity as numbers of threads increase,

 Three factory methods for creating thread pools in

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

 General algorithm for fork-join strategy:

 The ForkJoinTask is an abstract base class

 Blocks placed in dispatch queue

 For the Swift language a task is defined as a closure –

 Template library for designing parallel C++ programs

 The same for loop written using TBB with parallel_for

 Does fork()duplicate only the calling thread or all

 If thread has cancellation disabled, cancellation remains

 Deferred cancellation uses the interrupt() method,

 A thread can then check to see if it has been interrupted:

 Thread-local storage (TLS) allows each thread to have its

 struct task_struct points to process data structures

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

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