Computers are just as busy as the rest of us nowadays. They have lots of tasks to do at once and need some cleverness to get them all done at the same time. That's why threads are becoming a new model for programming. Microsoft Windows NT, the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE), and many UNIX-based operating systems support threads.

One advantage of most UNIX and DCE implementations is that they conform to a recently ratified POSIX standard (originally 1003.4a, now 1003.1c), which allows your programs to be portable between them. The POSIX threads standard, commonly known as Pthreads, is supported by most UNIX-based operating systems.

With threads programming, multiple tasks run concurrently within the same program. They can share a single CPU as processes do or take advantage of multiple CPUs when available. They provide a clean way to divide the tasks of a program while sharing data.

In this book you will learn when to use threads and how to make them efficient. The book delves into performance issues, comparing threads to processes, contrasting kernel threads to user threads, and showing how to measure speed. It describes in a simple, clear manner what all the advanced features are for and how threads interact with the rest of the UNIX system.