Talk:COMP 3000 Essay 1 2010 Question 8
Question clarification
To answer this question properly you need to discuss where pthreads came from. The UNIX process model came out in the early 1970's, pthreads was only really proposed in the late 1980's. That's 10-15 years of history, what was happening? What about the general development of threads in CS? Alternative pthread implementations (who had the first one? what was the first kernel-based one?). I know that the history of pthreads on linux is kind of complicated - see the NPTL. You don't need to talk about all of this - but you do need to go beyond just what happened with the pthread standard. --Anil
Thank you prof. Anil, we'll look into those questions in depth and edit our essay. --Npatel1
- UNIX was born in 1969
- Began on a PDP-11/20 machine with a text formatting program called roff and a text editor
- Was rewritten in C in 1972 -> brought forth more portable software
- Became available to Universities and commercial firms as well as the US Government
- Many editions of UNIX came out, by 1975 Versions 4, 5, and 6 were released
- The new versions added the concept of pipes -> led to more modular code-base and faster development cycle
- Pipeline is a chain of processes together by streams, so that the output of one process is the input of the next
- Became more and more portable
- In 1979, UNIX Version 7 was released
- Several more Versions 8, 9, and 10 released the in 80's
- Early UNIX had a 'process', which was essentially a thread of control, with a virtual address space
- Interacted through pipes because they could not share
- After a while, UNIX wanted processes that shared memory, bringing the invention of the thread
- Also called lightweight in contrast to the heavyweight processes before it
- This is dated around the late 1970's and the early 80's, and example is the microkernel
- Alternative Pthread implementation in the 4.0 Digital UNIX, known as DEC OSF/1
- It was a part of the Mach OS
- Pthread library schedules threads at a one-to-one relationship, all threads fight other threads, not threads of the same process.
- Good for priority, if priority is increased, so is the function of the specific process
- Doesn't limit a program to a single executing thread, many threads in a program can run on different CPU's
- NPTL (Native POSIX Thread Library) is software that enables the Linux kernel to run programs using POSIX threads efficiently
- Has become a part of the Linux kernel since Version 2.6 (Version 1 began around 1996)
- Was a massive improvement from LinuxThreads, which had no real support for threads
- NPTL was first released in Red Hat Linux 9
- Threads are still created with clone() system call and futex primitive is used to implement locking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipeline_%28Unix%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix#1970s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_POSIX_Thread_Library
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/os-research/part1/section-10.html
- Tmalone
That's great! Nice work Trevor, I'll get started on the paragraph that answers Prof's questions with the help of your notes. Hopefully have it done before 12! So you guys can check the essay again. (also if anyone wishes to give me a hand in with this portion of the essay, please do so under "Unsorted").
Hey, Rift...upon finishing the prof's requirement, can you please add footnotes? I'm unaware of how it's done. Thanks.
--Npatel1
yea i can add the footnote/reference stuff to the paragraphs you post. Rift 21:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
thanks Mark, I'll hopefully have the requirements done by 12ish. --Npatel1
Group 8
GROUP NAMES:
Niravkumar Patel (Npatel1)
Trevor Malone (Tmalone)
Mark Walts (Rift)
John Vanden Heuvel (jvheuvel)
Jeff Francom (Afranco2)
Discussion
POSIX Threads and the Linux Kernel --Gautam 23:52, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
Not from your group. However I found a webpage which you might find useful. The New Implementation of Threads for Linux --Gautam 22:56, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
Not extremely helpful but: A short history of unix Rift 18:30, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/posix/POSIX-A.FM5.pdf IEEE POSIX Testing Policy General Information The POSIX family of standards, Stephen R. Walli -afranco2
I'm not sure how we are planning on structuring this essay, but I will just write a bit on the history of Posix part for now. Does somebody want to handle writing an intro? - afranco2
Hey guys, sorry for the late reply... i just wanted everyone to finish their assignment portion. we would have our own set of explanation for question 8.
AFRANCO2; Here is a suggestion.
1st paragraph; should consist defining UNIX and POSIX/Threads
2nd paragrah; consisting the history behind POSIX and why UNIX was so late to implement the support of multithreaded processes.
3rd paragraph; should conclude it all.
I agree, but I don't think that we should limit it to specifically 'paragraphs' but rather sections. -afranco2
Here is a site that would take care of paragraph 1: https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/pthreads/
GAUTHAM provided us with very useful pdf. that talks about the history of POSIX.
This may be a stupid question, buy does anybody know what we have to do for citation? Are we using footnotes like a regular wiki? Or is there another conformation we need to follow? -afranco2
--footnotes are probably easiest, John v.
I'll take care of the first paragraph if you guys are comfortable with the structure of the essay (post it by the end of today). since we already have AFRANCO2 who did the history portion of the essay.
I made a new tab for "ESSAY" final copy*
I'm not sure about the citations; just keep the links you used to gather the information, we'll ask him on Tuesday.
(i was just wondering, is this is the kind of structure you were looking for? or should we change the structure?)
So what all do we need left? Sorry I am out of town trying to keep up as much as possible. Ive posted my research content on the primary page. And I've noticed we are getting pretty organized with our essay format. Just as an update process what has been completed and what is left to do? Because i don't wanna type up a bunch of information we may not need anymore. So Whatever else we need I can type up with all our info and then we can out the together the essay in the next couple days.
- Tmalone
And I think the structure is a good idea. We have enough information to turn it all into a good essay. If you have another suggestion on the structure though by all means tell us what you think.
- Tmalone
sounds good! I'm sorry i was unable to post the Intro today... I'll make sure to have it by tomorrow!
Tmalone, i think we have good portion for History; i will get us started with a good intro then link in the history as our second paragraph which afranco2 has provided. then we'll talk about why UNIX was soo late; finally conclude it all with a last paragraph.
Alright, I'll get started on a possible conclusion format. Then we can post it all and edit and add/delete whatever we want. So then hopefully by Tuesdays class we will have a good make-up of the essay we want.
- Tmalone
I read the current essay format posted. It was really well done good job guys. I read over it and corrected some minor grammar errors. So by sometime tomorrow I'll have a possible conclusion paragraph posted. If anyone else wants to type anything up for a conclusion they can feel free to as well! The more the better.
- Tmalone
It's looking good. Sorry if i'm a bit late to the party. I threw a paragraph down in the answer part. I know it doesn't really fit well.. but it really nees to get worked in.. -Rift
little late here too, got sidetracked with 3004 and 3008. I do have a concern in that 3 paragraphs really isn't an essay, he seemed to want more than that JOhn v.
anyone remember what was cited where in the essay? we're still missing references -- John
yeah, Tmalone decided that he was going to do the citation suitable to the essay. Feel free to help; upon finishing, we'll post it on the "page". Nothing fancy, Prof. Anil mentioned that he just wanted the basic format. John, the information that was cited is in discussion and also in collaboration. -Npatel1
I cited a few things and added a small paragraph. It's really hard to find things/events relating to it.. Rift 15:12, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
Sources
Everyone please post any extra links here; we'll organize it after everyone posts their links.
posted the ones that are provided on our discussion.
http://www.unix.org/whitepapers/shdiffs.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX_Threads
http://sourceware.org/pthreads-win32/
https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/pthreads/
http://www.kernel.org/doc/ols/2002/ols2002-pages-330-337.pdf
http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/184406204;jsessionid=GKSVKT3EOMUBDQE1GHRSKHWATMY32JVN
http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/posix/POSIX-A.FM5.pdf
Journal article "Achieving Efficiency and Portability in Systems Software: A Case Study on POSIX-Compliant Multithreaded Programs" http://dx.doi.org.proxy.library.carleton.ca/10.1109/TSE.2005.98