I have some experience with multithread programming under Linux (C/C++ & POSIX threads), however most obvious cases are sometimes very complicated. I have several static constant variables (global and function local) in my code, can I access them simultaneously from multiple threads without using mutexes? Because I don't modify them it should be ok, but it's always better to ask. I have to do heavy speed optimization, so even as fast operations as mutex lock/unlock are quite expensive for me, especially because my application is going to access these variables form long loops.