Chapter 13. Thread Synchronization

POSIX supports mutex locks for short- term locking and condition variables for waiting on events of unbounded duration. Signal handling in threaded programs presents additional complications that can be reduced if signal handlers are replaced with dedicated threads. This chapter illustrates these thread synchronization concepts by implementing controlled access to shared objects, reader-writer synchronization and barriers.

Objectives

• Learn the basics of thread synchronization

• Experiment with mutex locks and condition variables

• Explore classic synchronization problems

• Use threads with signals

• Understand design tradeoffs for synchronization