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Multithreaded Concepts

2

This chapter provides a brief overview of Sun WorkShop multithreaded development tools, extending Sun's development tools and SPARCompiler language systems with support for development of high-performance MP/MT (multiprocessing/multithreaded) applications.

Sun WorkShop includes multithreaded extensions to the SPARCworks Debugger as well as multiprocessor extensions to the SPARCompiler Fortran and C language systems. Sun WorkShop includes three tools to help you develop MP/MT applications:

LoopTool, a graphical user interface (GUI) application with full on-line help
Thread Analyzer, which uses a GUI, but does not currently support on-line help
LockLint, a command-line application, which is covered in Sun WorkShop: Command Line Utilities

This chapter contains the following sections:


Basic Concepts	page 20
The WorkShop MP/MT Solution	page 20
Other Sources of Information	page 21

Basic Concepts

Multiprocessing systems and multithreaded operating environments enable new levels of performance, responsiveness, and flexibility for applications that use parallelism in their implementation. Solaris user-level threads offer a powerful model for parallel, multithreaded applications that take advantage of SPARC multiprocessor and uniprocessor systems.

The benefits of threading your application include:

Increased performance on multiprocessor systems (which are I/O and compute intensive)
Increased performance on uniprocessor systems (which are I/O intensive)
More efficient resource usage (for existing parallel applications that run in multiple processes)

The WorkShop MP/MT Solution

Sun WorkShop supports two approaches to MP/MT application development:

Most C and C++ developers (and some Fortran developers) thread their applications by programming directly against Solaris user-level threads via the libthread library. With WorkShop's MP/MT applications, you can run the multithread extension to the debugger for debugging programs that use Solaris user-level threads. Use LockLint to statically check your program for consistent use of locks and potential race conditions. Use the Thread Analyzer to gather and display prof and gprof information for threaded (including auto-parallelized) programs.
Many compute-intensive Fortran applications exhibit loop-level parallelism, where computations are performed over large datasets in loops. Sun WorkShop lets you use this parallelism through automatic parallelization of Fortran 77, Fortran 90, and C programs. Use the compiler to parallelize loops in your program. Use LoopTool to examine loops parallelized by the Fortran 77, Fortran 90, or C compiler.

Other Sources of Information

The following documents contain code examples as well as conceptual information about Solaris threads on Solaris 2, and are suggested reading for developers who are designing and writing MP/MT applications.


Document	Author/Part Number
Threads Primer: A Guide to Multithreaded Programming	p/n 801-3176-10
Implementing Lightweight Threads	D. Stein, D. Shah -- Sunsoft, Inc USENIX--June 1992--San Antonio, TX
SunOS Multithreaded Architecture	M.L. Powell, S.R. Kleiman, S. Barton, D. Shah, D. Stein, M. Weeks -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. USENIX--Winter 1991-- Dallas, TX
Writing Multithreaded Code in Solaris	S. Kleiman, B. Smaalders, D. Stein, D. Shah -- SunSoft, Inc.

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