Multicore Application Programming: for Windows, Linux, and Oracle Solaris (Developer's Library)

Notice that the title contains "for Windows, Linux, and Oracle(r) Solaris" not "for Microsoft(r) Windows, Linux, and Oracle(r) Solaris". The author works for Oracle (via Sun). This results in an odd and at times distracting bias in the text. For example, in Chapter 1, the UltraSPARC T2 (aka niagara2) is used as the example modern processor instead of say the Intel CoreI7 (aka nehalem, westmere). Then there are many references to the Sun Studio compiler and specific compiler options. Yes, gcc and icc are covered although often after Sun Studio. The coverage of Oracle/Sun in this book does not match current market share, and sadly probably does not match future market share.Bias aside, this is a very good book on practical multicore programming. Read the other two (as of this writing) reviews. They lay it on a bit thick, but I basically agree. My one gripe is that the author is overly fond of automatic parallelization and Sun Studio's autopar. Having used a Sun Fire server for years, I have tried and been underwhelmed by autopar. Anyone reading this book would not satisfied with autopar. Also, mixing automatic parallelization in the same chapter with OpenMP does OpenMP a disservice.

Here is an author who is not only the consummate expert we expect when we buy such a book, but is likewise both an excellent writer and teacher. Technical material is presented in perfectly sized and easy to digest chunks, you will find no academic puffery here. Code examples are painstakingly minimal, so as to be easily and immediately grasped and to complement the text, rather than interrupt it. Would that more technical texts were presented this well, a real gem here.

Browsing through this book at the local bookstore, I found it to be a suitable road map for learning how to program multicore systems. There are several topics and technologies in this subject, and the book covers them broadly. I say this because the reader has to pursue each topic in depth through other resources. These are highlighted in the references section. (For example, to learn POSIX threads programming, I've followed through by studying Robbins and Robbins' "UNIX System Programming" and Kerrisk's "The Linux Programming Interface". As both these in turn point to Butenhof's book, I'll probably follow the trail there too ...) Thorough details on such things as NPTL, to the niggler's delight, are found beyond Gove's book."Multicore Application Programming" is useful for the aspiring system programmer.

Conceptually sound, this book starts at the right beginning to discuss multicore programming.All major concepts are treated in a logical order. There is good coverage on how to prevent bugs.If I have one thing to complain about, it would be that to my taste, there's a bit too much Solaris and too little Linux and Windows in this book.Note that this book predates the C11 and C++11 standards, the cross-platform multithreading capabilities in these standards are unfortunately not discussed.