Some exercises on Threads

1. Modify the program thread3.c on slide 27 (or close to) such that it uses 8 threads
rather than 4 threads. Each thread must also print the content of the variables
mytid, sum and mysum after the for loop but before calling the lock synchronization
primitive. Now try again, this time print the values of these variables immediately
after the instruction sum = sum + mysum;. What differences do you see and how
can you explain those differences.

2. Design a simulation with threads of a wed browser connecting with a server (web
site). The browser ask to download a file name OldFinalExam.pdf from this web
site. However, the web site respond ”You don’t have the permission to download
this file”. In your design you must specify:

(a) Which thread is the web browser and which thread is the web server
(b) How the web browser will deliver its request to the thread simulating the server
(c) How the thread simulating the web site will deliver its message to the thread
simulating the web browser
(d) The declaration of each function that will be executed as a thread (function
name, function parameters)
(e) How the web browser will wait for the respond from the web server

You do not need to code this simulation. Your design is not general, only for this
specific example. Your design focus on how the two threads communicate with each
other.

3. Write the pseudo-code of a parallel matrix multiplication algorithm A = B × C

using threads. The dimensions of the matrices are A = a × c, B = a × b and C =
b × c. The number of threads is a.

4. List the fields of a thread control block (TCB) and explain the purpose of each field.

5. Explain why each thread control block has entries (fields) to store the contain of its
run time registers but does not have entries to store the contain of the dynamically
allocated variables (variables that are allocated memory on the heap section of a
process).

6. Unlike static variables, threads do not share their stack with other threads. Why
then the stack is not saved in the TCB when a context switch is performed (thread
is de-scheduled)?

7. Can a thread write into the memory stack of another thread in a same process?

8. What is the binary representation of the character 5? What is the binary represen-
tation of the integer 5? How many bytes are needed to store the character 5 and
how many bytes are needed to store the integer 5?

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 9. Does the multithreaded web server below exhibit task or data parallelism?

10. Is it possible to have concurrency but not parallelism? Explain

11. Consider the following code segment:

pid t pid;
pid = fork();
if (pid == 0) { /* child process */
fork();
thread create( . . .);
}
fork();

(a) How many unique processes are created?

(b) How many unique threads are created?

12. Consider again the program thread3.c in the slides on threads (slide 27 or close to
that).

(a) How many TCBs have been instantiated in the kernel immediately after the
execution of the instruction ”pthread t threads[NTHREADS];” (line 1)
(b) How many thread stacks there are in the process immediately after the execu-
tion of the instruction ”pthread t threads[NTHREADS];” (line 1)
(c) How many TCBs are still instantiated just before the execution of the instruc-
tion ”for (i=0;i<ARRAYSIZE;i++){” (line 2) of the main thread
(d) How many thread stacks there are just before the execution of the instruction
”for (i=0;i<ARRAYSIZE;i++){” (line 2) of the main thread
(e) Assume a fork is executed just after the instruction ”pthread t threads[NTHREADS];”
(line 1), nothing else change in the code of thread3.c. How many TCBs will be
instantiated by the parent and child process all together
(f) Assume a POSIX fork is executed just before the instruction ”for (i=0; i<NTHREADS;
i++)” (line 3), nothing else change in the code of thread3.c. Theorize (argue)
what could happen when the loop ”for (i=0; i<NTHREADS; i++)” (line 3) is
executed in the child process (more likely this is implementation dependent).
(g) Assume the piece of code below is executed just after the instruction

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 "printf ("Done. Sum= %e \n", sum);"
(line 4). What will be the value of sum printed by the child process. Explain
your answer.

pthread_mutex_destroy(&sum_mutex);
if ((childpid = fork()) <= 0) {
pthread_mutex_init(&sum_mutex, NULL);
for (i=0; i<NTHREADS; i++) {
tids[i] = i;
pthread_create(&threads[i], &attr, do_work, (void *) &tids[i]);
}
for (i=0; i<NTHREADS; i++)
pthread_join(threads[i], NULL);
printf ("Done. Sum= %e \n", sum);
}
(h) The previous example is not practical as the child process repeat the same as
the parent. Give at least one good reason for forking processes which create
threads rather than having all the threads in a same process.

13. Assume the image of a process is swapped out from main memory to the external
memory. The process has 3 active threads, two in the ready queue and one in the
running state. What will happen to those 3 threads?