CPP Concurrency & Multithreading

Question 1

What is a race condition in concurrent programming?

Accepted Answer

A bug where program outcome depends on the relative timing of thread execution

Answer

A race condition occurs when multiple threads access shared data concurrently and the result depends on their unpredictable execution order.

Question 2

What is a mutex (mutual exclusion lock)?

Accepted Answer

A synchronization primitive that allows only one thread at a time to access a critical section

Answer

A mutex ensures mutual exclusion so that only one thread executes a critical section at a time, preventing race conditions.

Question 3

What is a deadlock in multithreaded programs?

Accepted Answer

A state where two or more threads each wait forever for resources held by the others

Answer

Deadlock occurs when threads form a circular dependency on locks, so none can proceed because each waits for another to release.

Question 4

What is the difference between parallelism and concurrency?

Accepted Answer

Concurrency is about dealing with multiple tasks at once (possibly interleaved); parallelism is executing multiple tasks simultaneously on multiple processors

Answer

Concurrency is a design concern about structuring a program to handle multiple tasks; parallelism is physical simultaneous execution on multiple cores.

Question 5

What is a thread-safe data structure?

Accepted Answer

A data structure that correctly handles simultaneous access from multiple threads without data corruption

Answer

Thread-safe data structures use synchronization internally so concurrent reads and writes do not corrupt their state.

CPP - Certified Professional Programmer Practice Test

CPP - Certified Professional Programmer Practice Test

CPP Concurrency & Multithreading