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Modern Operating Systems by Herbert Bos and Andrew S. Tanenb...
Modern_Operating_Systems_by_Herbert_Bos_and_Andrew_S._Tanenbaum_4th_Ed.pdf
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Modern Operating Systems by Herbert Bos and Andrew...
Modern_Operating_Systems_by_Herbert_Bos_and_Andrew_S._Tanenbaum_4th_Ed.pdf-M ODERN O PERATING S YSTEMS
Modern Operating Systems by Herbert...
Modern_Operating_Systems_by_Herbert_Bos_and_Andrew_S._Tanenbaum_4th_Ed.pdf-M ODERN O PERATING S YSTEMS
Page 166
SEC. 2.3
INTERPROCESS COMMUNICATION
135
really has to.
Since switching to the kernel and back is quite expensive, doing so
improves performance considerably.
A futex consists of two parts: a kernel service
and a user library.
The kernel service provides a ‘‘wait queue’’ that allows multiple
processes to wait on a lock.
They will not run, unless the kernel explicitly un-
blocks them.
For a process to be put on the wait queue requires an (expensive)
system call and should be avoided. In the absence of contention, therefore, the
futex works completely in user space.
Specifically, the processes share a common
lock variable—a fancy name for an aligned 32-bit integer that serves as the lock.
Suppose the lock is initially 1—which we assume to mean that the lock is free.
A
thread grabs the lock by performing an atomic ‘‘decrement and test’’ (atomic func-
tions in Linux consist of inline assembly wrapped in C functions and are defined in
header files). Next, the thread inspects the result to see whether or not the lock
was free. If it was not in the locked state, all is well and our thread has suc-
cessfully grabbed the lock.
However, if the lock is held by another thread, our
thread has to wait. In that case, the futex library does not spin, but uses a system
call to put the thread on the wait queue in the kernel. Hopefully, the cost of the
switch to the kernel is now justified, because the thread was blocked anyway.
When a thread is done with the lock, it releases the lock with an atomic ‘‘increment
and test’’ and checks the result to see if any processes are still blocked on the ker-
nel wait queue. If so, it will let the kernel know that it may unblock one or more of
these processes.
If there is no contention, the kernel is not involved at all.
Mutexes in Pthreads
Pthreads provides a number of functions that can be used to synchronize
threads. The basic mechanism uses a mutex variable, which can be locked or
unlocked, to guard each critical region. A thread wishing to enter a critical region
first tries to lock the associated mutex. If the mutex is unlocked, the thread can
enter immediately and the lock is atomically set, preventing other threads from
entering. If the mutex is already locked, the calling thread is blocked until it is
unlocked. If multiple threads are waiting on the same mutex, when it is unlocked,
only one of them is allowed to continue and relock it. These locks are not manda-
tory.
It is up to the programmer to make sure threads use them correctly.
The major calls relating to mutexes are shown in Fig. 2-30. As expected,
mutexes can be created and destroyed. The calls for performing these operations
are
pthread
mutex
init
and
pthread
mutex
destroy
, respectively. They can also
be locked—by
pthread
mutex
lock
—which tries to acquire the lock and blocks if
is already locked. There is also an option for trying to lock a mutex and failing
with an error code instead of blocking if it is already blocked. This call is
pthread
mutex
trylock
.
This call allows a thread to effectively do busy waiting if
that is ever needed. Finally,
pthread
mutex
unlock
unlocks a mutex and releases
exactly one thread if one or more are waiting on it. Mutexes can also have attrib-
utes, but these are used only for specialized purposes.
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