Multithreading Programming Techniques (J. Ranade Workstation Series) [Paperback]

Shashi Prasad (Author)

Book Description

Series: J. Ranade Workstation Series | Publication Date: January 1997

Particularly helpful for C programmers working with such platforms as UNIX, Windows NT, Windows 95, OS/2, and NextStep, this book has many unique features, including the first detailed look at SMP (symmetrical multiprocessing) and its role in successful parallel processing. Numerous illustrative examples are included throughout.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Maximize Performance in Your Operating System, With... Multithreading Programming Techniques Today's software application developers should be fully equipped to develop efficient multithreading programs for operating systems. This guide opffers that know-how-by providing a clear and direct route to multithreading efficiency in client/server, distributed, and object-oriented systems. Chapters written from a programmer's perspective cover multithreaded programming techniques for IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, SCO Unixware, HP/UX, digital UNIX, Windows NT, Windows 95, IBM OS/2, NEXTSTEP, and many other platforms that implement POSIX and DCE threads. you'll see how to: Use threads to develop scalable applications; Use threads to take advantage of the inherent parallelism of symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) machines; Create portable multithreaded software in a heterogenious environment; Convert single-threaded applications to a multithreaded application; Use efficient inter-thread synchronization primitives; Convert threaded applications from one operating system to another; Convert applications based on earlier POSIX standards to P1003.1C (draft 10) standard; Convert from either UNIX International threads or C threads to POSIX threads. The accompanying disk provides source code in C of many examples. Plus, it includes source code for Mthreads, a portable thread abstraction layer for the different thread implementations covered in the book.

Product Details

• Paperback: 410 pages
• Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill Osborne Media; Pap/Dsk edition (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0079122507
• ISBN-13: 978-0079122506
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,651,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #33 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Cross-platform Development

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good survey, but sloppy specifics., September 16, 1998

By 

J. Lilley (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Multithreading Programming Techniques (J. Ranade Workstation Series) (Paperback)

If what you are after is a survey of available mutli-threading support across several operating systems, then look no further. There is a great deal of information about how generic multithreading concepts map onto specific operating system features. In addition, the author details where different OS versions implement different behavior, and indicates OS's where some techniques are poorly suited.

However, if you want to learn the multi-threading support of any specific OS, this book is a poor choice. The examples are extremely sloppy; almost half of them are syntactially incorrect. For example, 7 is substituted for >, == is exchanged with =, and {} braces are missing. Many examples are incorrect even after fixing the syntax. Examples that might be correct contain techniques not explained in the prose.

I suggest using this book as cross-OS survey of multithreading support, and buy something else for the details.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for cross platform programming, July 5, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Multithreading Programming Techniques (J. Ranade Workstation Series) (Paperback)

This book focuses on the thread APIs on POSIX and WIN32 (+ others). It shows also how some features can be emulated using the primitives. A great timesaver is the discussion of the differences between the POSIX drafts. This won't teach you thread design, but it is a very useful reference to the API's because you can look up very quickly whether a certain feature is available on your platform(s) of choice.