Professional Multicore Programming : Design and Implementation for C++ Developers

by Hughes, Cameron; Hughes, Tracey

• ISBN13: 9780470289624
• ISBN10: 0470289627
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-09-09
• Publisher: Wrox

Summary

"This practical book shifts the focus from sequential programming techniques to parallel and multithreaded programming techniques and introduces you to the everyday fundamentals of programming for multiprocessor and multithreaded architectures." "This book is for developers of various skill levels who are making the move into multicore programming and application development."--BOOK JACKET.

Author Biography

Cameron Hughes is a professional software developer. He is a software engineer at CTEST Laboratories and a staff programmer/analyst at Youngstown State University. With over 15 years as a software developer, Cameron Hughes has been involved in software development efforts of all sizes, from business and industrial applications to aerospace design and development projects. Cameron is the designer of the Cognopaedia and is currently project leader on the GRIOT project that runs on the Pantheon at CTEST Laboratories. The Pantheon is a 24 node multicore cluster that is used in the development of multithreaded search engine and text extraction programs.

Tracey Hughes is a senior graphics programmer at CTEST Laboratories, where she develops knowledge and information visualization software. Tracey Hughes is the lead designer for the M.I.N.D, C.R.A.I.G, and NOFAQS projects that utilize epistemic visualization at CTEST Laboratories. She regularly contributes to Linux development software efforts. She is also a team member on the GRIOT project.
Cameron and Tracey Hughes are also the authors of six books on software development, multithreaded, and parallel programming: Parallel and Distributed Programming Using C (Addison Wesley, 2003), Linux Rapid Application Development (Hungry Minds, 2000), Mastering the Standard C++ Classes (Wiley, 1999), Object - Oriented Multithreading Using C (Wiley, 1997), Collection and Container Classes in C++ (Wiley, 1996), and Object - Oriented I/O Using C Iostreams (Wiley, 1995).

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xxi
The New Architecture	p. 1
What Is a Multicore?	p. 2
Multicore Architectures	p. 2
Hybrid Multicore Architectures	p. 3
The Software Developer's Viewpoint	p. 4
The Basic Processor Architecture	p. 5
The CPU (Instruction Set)	p. 7
Memory Is the Key	p. 9
Registers	p. 11
Cache	p. 12
Main Memory	p. 13
The Bus Connection	p. 14
From Single Core to Multicore	p. 15
Multiprogramming and Multiprocessing	p. 15
Parallel Programming	p. 15
Multicore Application Design and Implementation	p. 16
Summary	p. 17
Four Effective Multicore Designs	p. 19
The AMD Multicore Opteron	p. 21
Opteron's Direct Connect and HyperTransport	p. 22
System Request Interface and Crossbar	p. 23
The Opteron Is NUMA	p. 24
Cache and the Multiprocessor Opteron	p. 25
The Sun UltraSparc T1 Multiprocessor	p. 25
Program Profile 2-1	p. 26
UltraSparc T1 Cores	p. 27
Cross Talk and The Crossbar	p. 27
DDRAM Controller and L2 Cache	p. 28
UltraSparc T1 and the Sun and GNU gcc Compilers	p. 28
The IBM Cell Broadband Engine	p. 28
CBE and Linux	p. 29
CBE Memory Models	p. 29
Hidden from the Operating System	p. 30
Synergistic Processor Unit	p. 31
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor	p. 31
Northbridge and Southbridge	p. 32
Intel's PCI Express	p. 32
Core 2 Duo's Instruction Set	p. 32
Summary	p. 33
The Challenges of Multicore Programming	p. 35
What Is the Sequential Model?	p. 36
What Is Concurrency?	p. 37
Software Development	p. 37
Software Decomposition	p. 41
Task-to-Task Communication	p. 47
Concurrent Access to Data or Resources by Multiple Tasks or Agents	p. 51
Identifying the Relationships between Concurrently Executing Tasks	p. 56
Controlling Resource Contention Between Tasks	p. 59
How Many Processes or Threads Are Enough?	p. 59
Finding Reliable and Reproducible Debugging and Testing	p. 60
Communicating a Design That Has Multiprocessing Components	p. 61
Implementing Multiprocessing and Multithreading in C++	p. 62
C++ Developers Have to Learn New Libraries	p. 63
Processor Architecture Challenges	p. 64
Summary	p. 64
The Operating System's Role	p. 67
What Part Does the Operating System Play?	p. 68
Providing a Consistent Interface	p. 68
Managing Hardware Resources and Other Software Applications	p. 68
The Developer's Interaction with the Operating System	p. 69
Core Operating System Services	p. 71
The Application Programmer's Interface	p. 75
Decomposition and the Operating System's Role	p. 83
Hiding the Operating System's Role	p. 86
Taking Advantage of C++ Power of Abstraction and Encapsulation	p. 86
Interface Classes for the POSIX APIs	p. 86
Summary	p. 93
Processes, C++ Interface Classes, and Predicates	p. 95
We Say Multicore, We Mean Multiprocessor	p. 96
What Is a Process?	p. 97
Why Processes and Not Threads?	p. 97
Using posix_spawn()	p. 98
The file_actions Parameter	p. 99
The attrp Parameter	p. 100
A Simple posix_spawn() Example	p. 103
The guess_it Program Using posix_spawn	p. 104
Who Is the Parent? Who Is the Child?	p. 107
Processes: A Closer Look	p. 108
Process Control Block	p. 108
Anatomy of a Process	p. 109
Process States	p. 111
How Are Processes Scheduled?	p. 114
Monitoring Processes with the ps Utility	p. 116
Setting and Getting Process Priorities	p. 119
What Is a Context Switch?	p. 121
The Activities in Process Creation	p. 121
Using the fork() Function Call	p. 122
Using the exec() Family of System Calls	p. 122
Working with Process Environment Variables	p. 126
Using system() to Spawn Processes	p. 127
Killing a Process	p. 127
The exit(), and abort() Calls	p. 128
The kill() Function	p. 128
Process Resources	p. 129
Types of Resources	p. 130
POSIX Functions to Set Resource Limits	p. 131
What Are Asynchronous and Synchronous Processes	p. 133
Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Processes for fork(), posix_spawn(), system(), and exec()	p. 135
The wait() Function Call	p. 135
Predicates, Processes, and Interface Classes	p. 137
Program Profile 5-1	p. 138
Summary	p. 141
Multithreading	p. 143
What Is a Thread?	p. 143
User- and Kernel-Level Threads	p. 144
Thread Context	p. 147
Hardware Threads and Software Threads	p. 149
Thread Resources	p. 149
Comparing Threads to Processes	p. 150
Context Switching	p. 150
Throughput	p. 150
Communicating between Entities	p. 150
Corrupting Process Data	p. 151
Killing the Entire Process	p. 151
Reuse by Other Programs	p. 151
Key Similarities and Differences between Threads and Processes	p. 152
Setting Thread Attributes	p. 153
The Architecture of a Thread	p. 155
Thread States	p. 156
Scheduling and Thread Contention Scope	p. 157
Scheduling Policy and Priority	p. 159
Scheduling Allocation Domains	p. 160
A Simple Threaded Program	p. 160
Compiling and Linking Threaded Programs	p. 162
Creating Threads	p. 162
Passing Arguments to a Thread	p. 163
Program Profile 6-1	p. 165
Joining Threads	p. 165
Getting the Thread Id	p. 166
Using the Pthread Attribute Object	p. 167
Managing Threads	p. 171
Terminating Threads	p. 171
Managing the Thread's Stack	p. 180
Setting Thread Scheduling and Priorities	p. 183
Setting Contention Scope of a Thread	p. 187
Using sysconf()	p. 188
Thread Safety and Libraries	p. 190
Extending the Thread Interface Class	p. 193
Program Profile 6-2	p. 200
Summary	p. 200
Communication and Synchronization of Concurrent Tasks	p. 203
Communication and Synchronization	p. 204
Dependency Relationships	p. 205
Counting Tasks Dependencies	p. 208
What Is Interprocess Communication?	p. 210
What Are Interthread Communications?	p. 230
Synchronizing Concurrency	p. 238
Types of Synchronization	p. 239
Synchronizing Access to Data	p. 240
Synchronization Mechanisms	p. 246
Thread Strategy Approaches	p. 268
Delegation Model	p. 269
Peer-to-Peer Model	p. 271
Producer-Consumer Model	p. 272
Pipeline Model	p. 273
SPMD and MPMD for Threads	p. 274
Decomposition and Encapsulation of Work	p. 276
Problem Statement	p. 276
Strategy	p. 276
Observation	p. 277
Problem and Solution	p. 277
Simple Agent Model Example of a Pipeline	p. 278
Summary	p. 282
PADL and PBS: Approaches to Application Design	p. 283
Designing Applications for Massive Multicore Processors	p. 284
What Is PADL?	p. 287
Application Architecture Selection	p. 290
Concurrency Models in PADL	p. 300
The Implementation Model of PADL	p. 304
The Predicate Breakdown Structure (PBS)	p. 326
An Example: PBS for the "Guess-My-Code" Game	p. 327
Connecting PBS, PADL, and the SDLC	p. 328
Coding the PBS	p. 328
Summary	p. 328
Modeling Software Systems That Require Concurrency	p. 331
What Is UML?	p. 332
Modeling the Structure of a System	p. 334
The Class Model	p. 334
Visualizing Classes	p. 336
Ordering the Attributes and Services	p. 343
Visualizing Instances of a Class	p. 345
Visualizing Template Classes	p. 348
Showing the Relationship between Classes and Objects	p. 349
Visualizing Interface Classes	p. 353
The Organization of Interactive Objects	p. 356
UML and Concurrent Behavior	p. 357
Collaborating Objects	p. 357
Multitasking and Multithreading with Processes and Threads	p. 359
Message Sequences between Objects	p. 361
The Activities of Objects	p. 363
State Machines	p. 365
Visualizing the Whole System	p. 371
Summary	p. 372
Testing and Logical Fault Tolerance for Parallel Programs	p. 375
Can You Just Skip the Testing?	p. 376
Five Concurrency Challenges That Must Be Checked during Testing	p. 377
Failure: The Result of Defects and Faults	p. 379
Basic Testing Types	p. 379
Defect Removal versus Defect Survival	p. 380
How Do You Approach Defect Removal for Parallel Programs?	p. 381
The Problem Statement	p. 382
A Simple Strategy and Rough-Cut Solution Model	p. 382
A Revised Solution Model Using Layer 5 from PADL	p. 382
The PBS of the Agent Solution Model	p. 383
What Are the Standard Software Engineering Tests?	p. 386
Software Verification and Validation	p. 387
The Code Doesn't Work - Now What?	p. 388
What Is Logical Fault Tolerance?	p. 391
Predicate Exceptions and Possible Worlds	p. 397
What Is Model Checking?	p. 398
Summary	p. 398
UML for Concurrent Design	p. 401
Concurrency Models	p. 411
POSIX Standard for Thread Management	p. 427
POSIX Standard for Process Management	p. 567
Bibliography	p. 593
Index	p. 597
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