You’re pretty much correct, but threads share all segments except the stack. Threads have independent call stacks, however the memory in other thread stacks is still accessible and in theory you could hold a pointer to memory in some other thread’s local stack frame (though you probably should find a better place to put that … Read more
A thread is an execution context, which is all the information a CPU needs to execute a stream of instructions. Suppose you’re reading a book, and you want to take a break right now, but you want to be able to come back and resume reading from the exact point where you stopped. One way … Read more
Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlock: In concurrent computing, a deadlock is a state in which each member of a group of actions, is waiting for some other member to release a lock A livelock is similar to a deadlock, except that the states of the processes involved in the livelock constantly change with regard to one another, … Read more
Some people would say that two threads is too many – I’m not quite in that camp 🙂 Here’s my advice: measure, don’t guess. One suggestion is to make it configurable and initially set it to 100, then release your software to the wild and monitor what happens. If your thread usage peaks at 3, … Read more
Think of semaphores as bouncers at a nightclub. There are a dedicated number of people that are allowed in the club at once. If the club is full no one is allowed to enter, but as soon as one person leaves another person might enter. It’s simply a way to limit the number of consumers … Read more
Thread-safe code is code that will work even if many Threads are executing it simultaneously. http://mindprod.com/jgloss/threadsafe.html
Look, there’s no easy way to do this. I’m working on a project that is inherently multithreaded. Events come in from the operating system and I have to process them concurrently. The simplest way to deal with testing complex, multithreaded application code is this: If it’s too complex to test, you’re doing it wrong. If … Read more
When I am having a big heated discussion at work, I use a rubber chicken which I keep in my desk for just such occasions. The person holding the chicken is the only person who is allowed to talk. If you don’t hold the chicken you cannot speak. You can only indicate that you want … Read more
A race condition occurs when two or more threads can access shared data and they try to change it at the same time. Because the thread scheduling algorithm can swap between threads at any time, you don’t know the order in which the threads will attempt to access the shared data. Therefore, the result of … Read more
Both processes and threads are independent sequences of execution. The typical difference is that threads (of the same process) run in a shared memory space, while processes run in separate memory spaces. I’m not sure what “hardware” vs “software” threads you might be referring to. Threads are an operating environment feature, rather than a CPU … Read more