7.3 The POSIX Thread API

A number of vendors provide vendor-specific thread APIs. The IEEE specifies a standard 1003.1c-1995, POSIX API. Also referred to as Pthreads, POSIX has emerged as the standard threads API, supported by most vendors. We will use the Pthreads API for introducing multithreading concepts. The concepts themselves are largely independent of the API and can be used for programming with other thread APIs (NT threads, Solaris threads, Java threads, etc.) as well. All the illustrative programs presented in this chapter can be executed on workstations as well as parallel computers that support Pthreads.