Book Image

Python Parallel Programming Cookbook

By : Zaccone
Book Image

Python Parallel Programming Cookbook

By: Zaccone

Overview of this book

This book will teach you parallel programming techniques using examples in Python and will help you explore the many ways in which you can write code that allows more than one process to happen at once. Starting with introducing you to the world of parallel computing, it moves on to cover the fundamentals in Python. This is followed by exploring the thread-based parallelism model using the Python threading module by synchronizing threads and using locks, mutex, semaphores queues, GIL, and the thread pool. Next you will be taught about process-based parallelism where you will synchronize processes using message passing along with learning about the performance of MPI Python Modules. You will then go on to learn the asynchronous parallel programming model using the Python asyncio module along with handling exceptions. Moving on, you will discover distributed computing with Python, and learn how to install a broker, use Celery Python Module, and create a worker. You will understand anche Pycsp, the Scoop framework, and disk modules in Python. Further on, you will learnGPU programming withPython using the PyCUDA module along with evaluating performance limitations.
Table of Contents (8 chapters)
7
Index

How to define a thread


The simplest way to use a thread is to instantiate it with a target function and then call the start() method to let it begin its work. The Python module threading has the Thread() method that is used to run processes and functions in a different thread:

class threading.Thread(group=None,
                       target=None,
                       name=None,
                       args=(),
                       kwargs={}) 

In the preceding code:

  • group: This is the value of group that should be None; this is reserved for future implementations

  • target: This is the function that is to be executed when you start a thread activity

  • name: This is the name of the thread; by default, a unique name of the form Thread-N is assigned to it

  • args: This is the tuple of arguments that are to be passed to a target

  • kwargs: This is the dictionary of keyword arguments that are to be used for the target function

It is useful to spawn a thread and pass arguments to it that tell it what work...