A thread is a basic unit of CPU utilization; it comprises a thread ID, a program counter, a register set, and a stack. It shares with other threads belonging to the same process its code section, data section, and other operating-system resources, such as open files and signals. A traditional (or heavyweight) process has a single thread of control.If a process has multiple threads of control, it can perform more than one task at a time.
Many software packages that run on modern desktop PCs are multithreaded. An application typically is implemented as a separate process with several threads of control. A web browser might have one thread display images or text while another thread retrieves data from the network, for example. A word processor may have a thread for displaying graphics, another thread for responding to keystrokes from the user, and a third thread for performing spelling and grammar checking in the background.
In certain situations, a single application may be required to perform several similar tasks. For example, a web server accepts client requests for web pages, images, sound, and so forth. A busy web server may have several (perhaps thousands) of clients concurrently accessing it. If the web server ran as a traditional single-threaded process, it would be able to service only one client at a time. The amount of time that a client might have to wait for its request to be serviced could be enormous.
One solution is to have the server run as a single process that accepts requests. When the server receives a request, it creates a separate process to service that request. In fact, this process-creation method was in common use before threads became popular. Process creation is time consuming and resource intensive, as was shown in the previous chapter. If the new process will perform the same tasks as the existing process, why incur all that overhead? It is generally more efficient to use one process that contains multiple threads. This approach would multithread the web-server process. The server would create a separate thread that would listen for client requests; when a request was made, rather than creating another process, the server would create another thread to service the request.
Threads also play a vital role in remote procedure call (RPC) systems. RPCs allow interprocess communication by providing a communication mechanism similar to ordinary function or procedure calls. Typically, RPC servers are multithreaded. When a server receives a message, it services the message using a separate thread. This allows the server to service several concurrent requests. Java's RMI systems work similarly. Finally, many operating system kernels are now multithreaded; several threads operate in the kernel, and each thread performs a specific task, such as managing devices or interrupt handling. For example, Solaris creates a set of threads in the kernel specifically for interrupt handling; Linux uses a kernel thread for managing the amount of free memory in the system.
The benefits of multithreaded programming can be broken down into four major categories:
1. Responsiveness. Multithreading an interactive application may allow a program to continue running even if part of it is blocked or is performing a lengthy operation, thereby increasing responsiveness to the user. For instance, a multithreaded web browser could still allow user interaction in one thread while an image was being loaded in another thread.
2. Resource sharing. By default, threads share the memory and the resources of the process to which they belong. The benefit of sharing code and data is that it allows an application to have several different threads of activity within the same address space.
3. Economy. Allocating memory and resources for process creation is costly. Because threads share resources of the process to which they belong, it is more economical to create and context-switch threads. Empirically gauging the difference in overhead can be difficult, but in general it is much more time consuming to create and manage processes than threads. In Solaris, for example, creating a process is about thirty times slower than is creating a thread, and context switching is about five times slower.
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4. Utilization of multiprocessor architectures. The benefits of multithreading can be greatly increased in a multiprocessor architecture, where threads may be running in parallel on different processors. A singlethreaded process can only run on one CPU, no matter how many are available. Multithreading on a multi-CPU machine increases concurrency.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Operating System Concepts ( Multi tasking, multi programming, multi-user, Multi-threading )
- Different Types of Operating Systems
- Batch Operating Systems
- Time sharing operating systems
- Distributed Operating Systems
- Network Operating System
- Real Time operating System
- Various Operating system services
- Architectures of Operating System
- Monolithic architecture - operating system
- Layered Architecture of Operating System
- Microkernel Architecture of operating system
- Hybrid Architecture of Operating System
- System Programs and Calls
- Process Management - Process concept