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A program running on a parallel machine consists of multiple asynchronous threads that have to synchronize at various points to ensure program correctness. At a synchronization point, a thread may be forced to wait until the synchronization condition is satisfied. Waiting incurs a cost. This thesis investigates various types of synchronization mechanisms and techniques to minimize wasted processor cycles while waiting on a synchronization condition. In particular, two-phase waiting algorithms and multithreading are used to reduce the cost of waiting. The utility of these methods is analyzed with mathematical models and demonstrated through simulations. Two-phase waiting algorithms that rely on efficient waiting mechanisms provided by multithreaded processors are shown to be very robust under most operating circumstances.