Pthreads Win32

Pthread is the POSIX 1003.1-2001 standard which defines an application programming interface (API) for writing multithreaded applications. It is commonly used in linux. Win32 does not and is unlikely to ever support pthreads natively.

A good comparison between threading mechanism in Win32 and POSIX systems is Robert Sayegh's presentation "PThreads Vs Win32 Threads". Clay Breshears believed that Pthreads are better than Win32 threads. 

The Pthreads Win32 project seeks to provide a freely available and high-quality solution to this problem. The current release version is 2.9.1 (2012-05-27). It can be compiled with Visual C++. Some tests suggested Pthreads Win32 is faster than Win32 threads.

The source tree and precompiled .DLL, .LIB and necessary header files are included in the zip file named "pthread-w32-v-v-v-release.zip" at:

ftp://sourceware.org/pub/pthreads-win32 

(v-v-v is the version number, e.g. 1-4-0, and “release” is a descriptive term that may vary, e.g. beta1, rc1. Etc). Versions older than 2.9.1 are in self-extracting .exe files.

Just the DLLs, LIBs, header files, and admin documentation is available at:

ftp://sourceware.org/pub/pthreads-win32/dll-latest

The source tree is available as a gzipped tar file from:

ftp://sourceware.org/pub/pthreads-win32

The source files are also available in unpacked form at:

ftp://sourceware.org/pub/pthreads-win32/sources