java.util.concurrent vs. Boost Threads library

Question

How do the Boost Thread libraries compare against the java.util.concurrent libraries?

Performance is critical and so I would prefer to stay with C++ (although Java is a lot faster these days). Given that I have to code in C++, what libraries exist to make threading easy and less error prone.

I have heard recently that as of JDK 1.5, the Java memory model was changed to fix some concurrency issues. How about C++? The last time I did multithreaded programming in C++ was 3-4 years ago when I used pthreads. Although, I don't wish to use that anymore for a large project. The only other alternative that I know of is Boost Threads. However, I am not sure if it is good. I've heard good things about java.util.concurrent, but nothing yet about Boost threads.

Answer 1

java.util.concurrent and boost threads library have an overlapping functionality, but java.util.concurrent also provide a) higher-level abstractions and b) also lower level functions.

Boost threads provide:

• Thread (Java: java.util.Thread)
• Locking (Java: java.lang.Object and java.util.concurrent.locks)
• Condition Variables (Java. java.lang.Object and java.util.concurrent)
• Barrier (Java: Barrier)

java.util.concurrent has also:

• Semaphores
• Reader-writer locks
• Concurrent data structures, e.g. a BlockingQueue or a concurrent lock-free hash map.
• the Executor services as a highly flexible consumer producer system.
• Atomic operations.

A side note: C++ has currently no memory model. On a different machine the same C++ application may have to deal with a different memory model. This makes portable, concurrent programming in C++ even more tricky.