Chapter 4: Threads

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Chapter 4: Threads
Topics in the syllabus
Overview
Multicore Programming
Multithreading Models

Topics not in the syllabus

Thread Libraries
Implicit Threading
Threading Issues
Operating System Examples

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Objectives
 To introduce the notion of a thread—a fundamental
unit of CPU utilization that forms the basis of
multithreaded computer systems
 To discuss the APIs for the Pthreads, Windows,
and Java thread libraries
 To explore several strategies that provide implicit
threading
 To examine issues related to multithreaded
programming
 To cover operating system support for threads in
Windows and Linux

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multithreaded Server Architecture

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
multiprocessor architectures

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multicore Programming (Cont.)

 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
 As # of threads grows, so does architectural support
for threading
 CPUs have cores as well as hardware threads
 Consider Oracle SPARC T4 with 8 cores, and 8
hardware threads per core

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Concurrency vs. Parallelism
 Concurrent execution on single-core system:

 Parallelism on a multi-core system:

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Single and Multithreaded Processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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?

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 Solaris
 Linux
 Tru64 UNIX
 Mac OS X

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multithreading Models

 Many-to-One

 One-to-One

 Many-to-Many

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 Solaris 9 and later

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 Solaris prior to version 9
 Windows with the ThreadFiber
package

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Two-level Model
 Similar to M:M, except that it allows a user
thread to be bound to kernel thread
 Examples
 IRIX
 HP-UX
 Tru64 UNIX
 Solaris 8 and earlier

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 (Solaris, Linux,
Mac OS X)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Pthreads Example

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Pthreads
Pthreads Example
Example (Cont.)
(Cont.)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Pthreads Code for Joining 10 Threads

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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Windows Multithreaded C Program

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Windows Multithreaded C Program (Cont.)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Java Multithreaded Program

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Java Multithreaded Program (Cont.)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 Three methods explored
 Thread Pools
 OpenMP
 Grand Central Dispatch
 Other methods include Microsoft Threading
Building Blocks (TBB), java.util.concurrent
package

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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:

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
#pragma omp parallel for
for(i=0;i<N;i++) {
c[i] = a[i] + b[i];
}
Run for loop in parallel

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Grand Central Dispatch

 Apple technology for Mac OS X and iOS operating

systems
 Extensions to C, 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Grand Central Dispatch
 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
 Three system wide queues with priorities low,
default, high

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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:

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 correct number kernel
threads

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.40 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Operating System Examples

 Windows Threads
 Linux Threads

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.41 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Windows Threads

 Windows implements the Windows API – primary

API for Win 98, Win NT, Win 2000, Win XP, and Win
7
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.42 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.43 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Windows Threads Data Structures

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.44 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 4.45 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 End of Chapter 4

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne