Threading and Concurrency

Key Question

How can a single instance of our program perform multiple coordinated tasks at the same time?

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  • Sequential programming, VLIW concept, desire to emulate the real world with parallel threads, freeof-charge exploitation of multiple cores (eight per myth machine, eight per rice machine), pros and cons of threading versus forking.

  • C++ threads, thread construction using function pointers, blocks, functors, join, detach, race conditions, mutex, IA32 implementation of lock and unlock, spin-lock, busy waiting, preemptive versus cooperative multithreading, yield, sleep_for.

  • Condition variables, rendezvous and thread communication, lock_guard, wait, notify_one, notify_all, deadlock, busy waiting.

  • Semaphore concept and semaphore implementation, generalized counter, pros and cons of semaphore versus exposed condition variables, thread pools, cost of threads versus processes.

  • Active threads, blocked threads, ready thread queue, high-level implementation details of the thread manager, mutex, and condition_variable_any.

  • Pure C alternatives via pthreads, pros of pthreads over C++ thread package.

Lectures

Labs

Assignments