Linux Systems Programming: Multithreading

Duration: 2 Days

Pricing, Organizational

Related Courses

• Linux Systems Programming (Course Series)

• Linux Systems Programming: Introduction

• Linux Systems Programming: Network Programming

• Linux Systems Programming: Virtual Memory, IPC, Shared Libraries

• Linux Basics: A Gentle Introduction

• Linux Kernel Driver Development

• Embedded Software Development: Hardware, Realtime, and Memory Management

• A Week with the Raspberry Pi

Slide Material

• PDF Slides, sysprog

Parallel programming is hard - this is no different on Linux. This course gives a solid overview of multithreading on Linux (POSIX threads, basically), and its mechanisms for synchronization and communication. Ah, yes, realtime.

Course Outline

• Thread lifecycle. Once started, threads need to be managed, and sometimes they also need to be terminated.

  • Thread creation

  • Joinable vs. detached

  • Thread termination

  • Thread attributes: realtime properties

• Raceconditions, and avoidance. In the face of multithreading, all code you write can only be wrong. Why is that?

  • Load-Modify-Store: the mother of all raceconditions

  • Mutexes: types (e.g. normal vs. recursive), usage

  • Atomic operations on builtin types

• Communication mechanisms. Understanding condition variables

  • Principles: the lost wakeup bug

  • Exercise: a handwritten message queue

  • Exercise: mimicking WIN32 auto reset events

• Miscellaneous.

  • One-time initialization

  • Thread Specific Data (Thread Local Storage)

• Realtime. Yes, Linux is a realtime OS.

  • Scheduling policies: FIFO, round robin, batch, deadline …

  • Scheduling priorities

  • Bugs, bugs: priority inversion, and avoidance

Prerequisites

A solid understanding of the C programming language is helpful. Fun with low-level hacking is required.