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    Threads & Concurrency: Practice Exercises

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    Hil
    This document discusses threads and concurrency in computer systems. It provides examples of applications that benefit from multithreading, such as a web server handling each request in a separate thread. It also discusses differences between user-level and kernel-level threads, and how resources are allocated for threads compared to processes. Real-time threads should be bound to a specific kernel-level thread to ensure they can run with minimal delay.

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    Threads & Concurrency: Practice Exercises

    Uploaded by

    Hil
    24 views2 pages
    This document discusses threads and concurrency in computer systems. It provides examples of applications that benefit from multithreading, such as a web server handling each request in a separate thread. It also discusses differences between user-level and kernel-level threads, and how resources are allocated for threads compared to processes. Real-time threads should be bound to a specific kernel-level thread to ensure they can run with minimal delay.

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    This document discusses threads and concurrency in computer systems. It provides examples of applications that benefit from multithreading, such as a web server handling each request in a separate thread. It also discusses differences between user-level and kernel-level threads, and how resources are allocated for threads compared to processes. Real-time threads should be bound to a specific kernel-level thread to ensure they can run with minimal delay.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    24 views2 pages

    Threads & Concurrency: Practice Exercises

    Uploaded by

    Hil
    This document discusses threads and concurrency in computer systems. It provides examples of applications that benefit from multithreading, such as a web server handling each request in a separate thread. It also discusses differences between user-level and kernel-level threads, and how resources are allocated for threads compared to processes. Real-time threads should be bound to a specific kernel-level thread to ensure they can run with minimal delay.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    Threads &

    CHAPTER
    4
    Concurrency

    Practice Exercises
    4.1 Provide three programming examples in which multithreading provides
    better performance than a single-threaded solution.
    Answer:

    a. A web server that services each request in a separate thread


    b. A parallelized application such as matrix multiplication where
    various parts of the matrix can be worked on in parallel
    c. An interactive GUI program such as a debugger where one thread is
    used to monitor user input, another thread represents the running
    application, and a third thread monitors performance

    4.2 Using Amdahl’s Law, calculate the speedup gain of an application that
    has a 60 percent parallel component for (a) two processing cores and (b)
    four processing cores.
    Answer:

    a. With two processing cores we get a speedup of 1.42 times.


    b. With four processing cores, we get a speedup of 1.82 times.

    4.3 Does the multithreaded web server described in Section 4.1 exhibit task
    or data parallelism?
    Answer:
    Data parallelism. Each thread is performing the same task, but on differ-
    ent data.
    4.4 What are two differences between user-level threads and kernel-level
    threads? Under what circumstances is one type better than the other?
    Answer:

    a. User-level threads are unknown by the kernel, whereas the kernel


    is aware of kernel threads.
    113
    114 Chapter 4 Threads & Concurrency

    b. On systems using either many-to-one or many-to-many model


    mapping, user threads are scheduled by the thread library, and the
    kernel schedules kernel threads.
    c. Kernel threads need not be associated with a process, whereas
    every user thread belongs to a process. Kernel threads are generally
    more expensive to maintain than user threads, as they must be
    represented with a kernel data structure.
    4.5 Describe the actions taken by a kernel to context-switch between kernel-
    level threads.
    Answer:
    Context switching between kernel threads typically requires saving the
    value of the CPU registers from the thread being switched out and restor-
    ing the CPU registers of the new thread being scheduled.
    4.6 What resources are used when a thread is created? How do they differ
    from those used when a process is created?
    Answer:
    Because a thread is smaller than a process, thread creation typically
    uses fewer resources than process creation. Creating a process requires
    allocating a process control block (PCB), a rather large data structure.
    The PCB includes a memory map, a list of open files, and environment
    variables. Allocating and managing the memory map is typically the
    most time-consuming activity. Creating either a user thread or a kernel
    thread involves allocating a small data structure to hold a register set,
    stack, and priority.
    4.7 Assume that an operating system maps user-level threads to the kernel
    using the many-to-many model and that the mapping is done through
    LWPs. Furthermore, the system allows developers to create real-time
    threads for use in real-time systems. Is it necessary to bind a real-time
    thread to an LWP? Explain.
    Answer:
    Yes. Timing is crucial to real-time applications. If a thread is marked as
    real-time but is not bound to an LWP, the thread may have to wait to
    be attached to an LWP before running. Consider a situation in which a
    real-time thread is running (is attached to an LWP) and then proceeds
    to block (must perform I/O, has been preempted by a higher-priority
    real-time thread, is waiting for a mutual exclusion lock, etc.). While the
    real-time thread is blocked, the LWP it was attached to is assigned to
    another thread. When the real-time thread has been scheduled to run
    again, it must first wait to be attached to an LWP. By binding an LWP to
    a real-time thread, you are ensuring that the thread will be able to run
    with minimal delay once it is scheduled.

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