Intended for programmers familiar with C++, this book explains how the C++ standard library, algorithms, and container classes behave in distributed and parallel environments, and offers methods for extending the C++ language through class libraries and function libraries to accomplish distributed and parallel programming tasks. Topics include the new POSIX and UNIX standards for multithreading, the PVM and MPI libraries, designing components that support concurrency, agent- oriented architectures, and blackboard architectures.