Multithreaded programming
This section provides guidelines for writing multithreaded programs using the threads library (libpthreads.a).
The AIX® threads library is based on the X/Open Portability Guide Issue 5 standard. For this reason, the following information presents the threads library as the AIX implementation of the XPG5 standard.
Parallel programming uses the benefits of multiprocessor systems, while maintaining a full binary compatibility with existing uniprocessor systems. The parallel programming facilities are based on the concept of threads.
- Parallel programming can improve the performance of a program.
- Some common software models are well-suited to parallel-programming techniques.
Traditionally, multiple single-threaded processes have been used to achieve parallelism, but some programs can benefit from a finer level of parallelism. Multithreaded processes offer parallelism within a process and share many of the concepts involved in programming multiple single-threaded processes.
The following information introduces threads and the associated programming facilities. It also discusses general topics concerning parallel programming: