Introduction to Concurrency in C

Concurrent programming in C involves managing multiple threads of execution within a single application, allowing for parallel task processing and increased efficiency on multicore processors.

Processes are independent execution units with their own state information. Threads, however, are lighter, share resources and are more scalable for concurrent tasks within the same application context.

Pthreads is a POSIX standard for threads, providing a portable and scalable threading library for C. It includes functions for thread creation, synchronization, and management.

Pthreads offer synchronization primitives like mutexes, condition variables, and read-write locks to manage access to shared resources, preventing race conditions and deadlocks.

C11 introduced `_Atomic` keyword for atomic operations, allowing certain computations to occur without interruption, ensuring data integrity across threads without traditional locking mechanisms.

Concurrent programming must consider memory consistency models, which define the visibility of memory operations across different threads, influencing the program’s correctness and performance.

Beyond threads, advanced techniques like lock-free data structures, transactional memory, and the C11 'threads.h' provide further capabilities for efficient and robust concurrent programs.