Semester 2 G52CON Concepts of Concurrency

This is the web page for the second part of G52CON taught by Brian Logan. The web page for the first part of the module (lectures 1-10) taught by Andrezj Bargiela can be found here.

In the second part of the module, high-level concepts will be introduced in pseudocode, with more detailed implementations in Java where relevant. All the necessary material on Java threads should have been covered in G52APR, however you may find this lecture on Threads in Java (and the associated example applet) useful.

Lectures

Lectures are on Mondays at 5pm and Tuesdays at 9am, both in A25 (Business School South).

Reading List

Recommended Reading

• Andrews (2000), Foundations of Multithreaded, Parallel and Distributed Programming, Addison Wesley.
  The errata page contains a list of typos and a couple of major errors.
• Lea (2000), Concurrent Programming in Java: Design Principles and Patterns, (2nd Edition), Addison Wesley.
  There is an online supplement to the book and the errata page again lists a number of typos and errors, though less serious than in Andrews.

Further Reading

• Ben-Ari (1982), Principles of Concurrent Programming, Prentice Hall.
• Andrews (1991), Concurrent Programming: Principles & Practice, Addison Wesley.
• Burns & Davies (1993), Concurrent Programming, Addison Wesley.
• Hartley (1998), Concurrent Programming: The Java Programming Language, Oxford.
• Magee & Kramer (1999), Concurrency: State Models and Java Programs, John Wiley.
• Bishop (2000), Java Gently, 3rd Edition, Addison-Wesley.
• Huth & Ryan (2000), Logic in computer science: modelling and reasoning about systems, Cambridge University Press.

You may also find the Java Tutorial useful for the material on Java.

Note that there is also a version of the reading list with links to the University Library catalogue.

Suggested Reading

Note that the following list of suggested reading is provisional, as it may necessary to change the order in which topics are presented.

• Background on Java Threads. Lea (2000), chapter 1; Java Tutorial, Threads.
• Lecture 11: Semaphores I. Andrews (2000), chapter 4, sections 4.1--4.2; Ben-Ari (1982), chapter 4; Burns & Davies (1993), chapter 6.
• Lecture 12: Semaphores II. Andrews (2000), chapter 4, sections 4.1--4.2; Ben-Ari (1982), chapter 4; Burns & Davies (1993), chapter 6.
  For Producer-Consumer Problems. Andrews (2000), chapter 1, section 1.6; Ben-Ari (1982), chapter 4.
• Lecture 13: Monitors I. Andrews (2000), chapter 5; Ben-Ari (1982), chapter 5; Burns & Davies (1993), chapter 7, sections 7.4-7.9.
• Lecture 14: Monitors II. Andrews (2000), chapter 5; Ben-Ari (1982), chapter 5; Burns & Davies (1993), chapter 7, sections 7.4-7.9.
  for Readers and Writers Problems. Andrews (2000), chapter 4, section 4.4, chapter 5, section 5.4; Ben-Ari (1982), chapter 5, section 5.4; Burns & Davies (1993), chapter 6, section 6.8;
• Lecture 15: Synchronisation in Java I. Lea (2000), chapter 2; Java Tutorial, Synchronizing Threads.
• Lecture 16: Synchronisation in Java II. Lea (2000), chapter 3.
• Lecture 17: Remote Inovcation. Andrews (2000), chapter 8; Ben-Ari (1982), chapter 6; Burns & Davies (1993), chapter 5; Andrews (1991), chapter 9.

Exercises

There will be a number of (unassessed) exercises covering some of the programming constructs and proof techniques introduced in the module. Model answers will be given in the lectures.

• Exercise 1: Semaphores. Model solution to the exercise.
• Exercise 2: Monitors. Model solution to the exercise.

Lecture Slides

Warning: the slides are not `lecture notes': they are there to help present the material, not to act as a reference to the main points covered in the lecture. Simply reading the slides won't necessarily give you a good grasp of the syllabus. They are specifically not a substitute for taking your own notes or reading the suggested reading for the lecture.

In some cases, an abridged version of the lecture slides will be made available before the lecture. These will be replaced by the unabridged version after the lecture.

• Lecture 11: Semaphores I Slides
  
• Lecture 12: Semaphores II Slides, the Producer-Consumer/Bounded Buffer applet and the Dining Philosophers applet (from Magee & Kramer (1999))
  
• Lecture 13: Monitors I Slides
  
• Lecture 14: Monitors II Slides
  
• Lecture 15: Synchronisation in Java I Slides
  
• Lecture 16: Synchronisation in Java II Slides
  
• Lecture 17: Remote Invocation Slides
  
• Lecture 18: Distributed Processing in Java Slides
  
• Lecture 19: Revision Slides
  

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Copyright © 2013 Brian Logan

This file is maintained by Brian Logan

Last modified: 4-Mar-2013, 10:19