Simpler Multithreading in C++0x

ne major new feature in the C++0x standard is multi-threading support. Prior to C++0x, any multi-threading support in your C++ compiler has been provided as an extension to the C++ standard, which has meant that the details of that support varies between compilers and platforms. However, with the new standard, all compilers will have to conform to the same memory model and provide the same facilities for multi-threading (though implementors are still free to provide additional extensions). What does this mean for you? It means you'll be able to port multi-threaded code between compilers and platforms with much reduced cost. This will also reduce the number of different APIs and syntaxes you’ll have to know when writing for multiple platforms.

The core of the new thread library is the std::thread class, which manages a thread of execution, so let's start by looking at that.