Parallel Programming in C for Linux and POSIX Platforms (LNXPR3)

Unix-like systems, Linux - programming

Linux and UNIX platforms provide comprehensive support for multiprocessing and multithreading, along with tools for synchronization, communication, and resource sharing. While the ISO C library focuses primarily on threading, the UNIX environment traditionally supports parallelism through processes. Many POSIX features are available for both processes and threads, enabling the development of high-performance, parallel applications.

This course offers an in-depth exploration of operating system features related to network connections, inter-process communication, and shared memory. Participants will learn how to effectively utilize these tools and understand how kernel-provided mechanisms integrate to deliver powerful parallel programming capabilities.

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The course:

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  • High-performance parallel applications
    1. Varying approaches to parallelism
    2. UNIX application development with POSIX.1-2024
    3. Cross-platform parallelism in C11 and C23
  • Inter-process communication
    1. Multiprocessing with POSIX API
    2. Mechanisms provided by the operating system
    3. Custom solutions for IPC
  • Sockets and message queues
    1. Talking to forked processes
    2. Local client-server architecture
    3. Cluster and remote communications
  • Shared memory communication
    1. Bypassing the kernel with POSIX and SystemV
    2. Forking and client-server variants
    3. Memory access synchronization via semaphores
  • Threaded communication
    1. Why are people afraid of threads
    2. Advantages of threaded applications
    3. Thread synchronization
  • Hybrid synchronization mechanisms
    1. Mechanisms for both threads and processes
    2. Linux inter-task communication
    3. Real-time consideration
  • Locking and blocking
    1. Mutexes, condition variables
    2. Semaphores and Linux futexes
    3. Deadlocks and other issues
  • Lock-free synchronization
    1. Atomic operations and variables
    2. Memory ordering and fencing
    3. Data structure examples
  • High-performance operation
    1. Large numbers of file descriptors
    2. Event multiplexing mechanisms
    3. Playing nice with the scheduler
  • Debugging parallel applications
    1. Debugging threads and processes 
    2. Data access coherence and heisenbugs
    3. Memory allocation coherence
Assumed knowledge:
Knowledge of the C language, basic orientation in programming in Unix systems and user knowledge of working with the Unix/Linux systém
Recommended previous course:
Operating System Interface on Linux and POSIX Platforms (LNXPR2)
Schedule:
3 days (9:00 AM - 5:00 PM )
Language: