May 2025
Intermediate to advanced
573 pages
14h 38m
English
From an article on a new operating system for the IBM PC: Real concurrency — in which one program actually continues to function while you call up and use another — is more amazing but of small use to the average person. How many programs do you have that take more than a few seconds to perform any task?
— New York Times, 25 April 1989
This chapter considers the concurrent programming environment that an operating system provides for applications. It describes a model of concurrent execution, and shows why applications that operate concurrently need mechanisms to coordinate and synchronize. It introduces basic concepts, such as processes and semaphores, and explains how ...
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