Linux continues to gain market share in embedded systems. As embedded processing power increases and more demanding applications in need of multi-threading capabilities are developed, Native POSIX Threads Library (NPTL) support becomes crucial. The GNU C library has had NPTL support for a number of years on multiple processor architectures. However, the GNU C library is more suited for workstation and server platforms and not embedded systems due to its size. uClibc is a POSIX-compliant C library designed for size and speed, but currently lacking NPTL support. This paper will present the design and implementation of NPTL support in uClibc. In addition to the design overview, benchmarks, limitations and comparisons between glibc and uClibc will be discussed. NPTL for uClibc is currently only supported for the MIPS processor architecture.

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