C++ Tutorial: Concurrency
std::thread, mutex, lock_guard, atomic, async, future, and promise — concurrent programming in C++.
Parallelism at the metal level
C++ concurrency gives you direct control over threads — the actual OS threads, not green threads or promises. With that power comes responsibility: data races, deadlocks, and memory ordering issues.
Modern C++ provides the tools to avoid these: `mutex` for mutual exclusion, `atomic` for lock-free operations, `async`/`future` for task-based parallelism.
What you'll learn in this C++ concurrency tutorial
This interactive C++ tutorial has 6 hands-on exercises. Estimated time: 22 minutes.
- std::thread — create threads — `#include <thread>` to use `std::thread`.
- mutex — prevent race conditions — Multiple threads accessing shared data simultaneously causes race conditions.
- atomic — lock-free operations — `atomic<T>` provides thread-safe operations without mutex overhead for simple types:
- async and future — task parallelism — `std::async` runs a function asynchronously and returns a `future<T>`.
- condition_variable — coordinate threads — `condition_variable` lets threads wait for a condition and notify others:
- Build a parallel sum — No starter code.
C++ Concurrency concepts covered
- Parallelism at the metal level