C++ Standard Library, The: A Tutorial and Reference, 2nd Edition

Chapter 18. Concurrency

Modern system architectures usually support running multiple tasks and multiple threads at the same time. Especially when multiple processor cores are provided, the execution time of programs can significantly improve when multiple threads are used.

However, executing things in parallel also introduces new challenges. Instead of doing one statement after the other, multiple statements can be performed simultaneously, which can result in such problems as concurrently accessing the same resources, so that creations, reads, writes, and deletions don’t take place in an expected order and provide unexpected results. In fact, concurrent access to data from multiple threads easily can become a nightmare, with such problems as ...