Question

What is the history of POSIX Threads (pthreads)? Consider - does this history explain why UNIX was so late to implement support for multithreaded processes?

Answer

Posix threads began in an era when multithreading started becoming a popular idea. UNIX traditionally had a system running only a single thread under a process. These processes could not share memory and interacted using 'pipes'. Once developers started wanting to be able to run multiple threads under one process, IEEE began to form together the POSIX standards. In 1988 POSIX.1 was ratified and was accepted as the international standard in 1990. From there the POSIX standards grew to more than 20 individual standards, encapsulating a large area of different groups.-afranco2

Hey guys, i'm just gunna get this started by posting a few links for everyone to get going. This will help explain a general idea of what they are and the history of them. Please add some more links or anything else you think would be helpful!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX_Threads https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/pthreads/ http://sourceware.org/pthreads-win32/

-tmalone

I found this, might not help, but it might:--Rannath 02:09, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but most of what I am able to find has to do with information on things that fall under POSIX, not actually about POSIX-afranco2

POSIX Threads, or pthreads, is a thread that is commonly used in UNIX systems but it also seen in some Microsoft Windows systems. A thread is a unit of process that executes segments of code within applications. When a process gets called from the system, the thread will execute the code for the process. POSIX stands for Portable Operating System Interface (for UNIX) and has been used by many independent sellers of hardware. There has always been issues such that developers could not create a reliable protable pthread application. For the use of multi-threading, its implementation arrived fairly late because the systems could not support it. Data mapping onto Linux gave birth to several problems due to the fact that POSIX and UNIX were implemented so differently.

-tmalone

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/os-research/part1/section-10.html

Might be of some use as well --Lmundt 14:48, 7 October 2010 (UTC) https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/pthreads/