Principles of Concurrent and Distributed Programming provides an introduction to concurrent programming focusing on general principles and not on specific systems.
Software today is inherently concurrent or distributed – from event-based GUI designs to operating and real-time systems to Internet applications. The new edition of this classic introduction to concurrency has been completely revised in view of the growing importance of concurrency constructs embedded in programming languages and of formal methods such as model checking that are widely used in industry.
§ A companion website at www.pearson.co.uk/ben-ari with additional resources for both students and instructors, including source code in various languages for the programs in the book, answers to the exercises, and slides for all diagrams, algorithms and programs.
§ Focuses on algorithmic principles rather than language syntax;
§ Emphasizes the use of the Spin model checker for modeling concurrent systems and verifying program correctness;
§ Explains the implementation of concurrency in the Java and Ada languages.
§ Facilitates lab work with software tools for learning concurrent and distributed programming.
Contents
Preface xi
1 What is Concurrent Programming? 1
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Concurrency as abstract parallelism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Multitasking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 The terminology of concurrency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.5 Multiple computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.6 The challenge of concurrent programming . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2 The Concurrent Programming Abstraction 7
2.1 The role of abstraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2 Concurrent execution as interleaving of atomic statements . . . . 8
2.3 Justification of the abstraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.4 Arbitrary interleaving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.5 Atomic statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.6 Correctness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.7 Fairness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.8 Machine-code instructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.9 Volatile and non-atomic variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.10 The BACI concurrency simulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.11 Concurrency in Ada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.12 Concurrency in Java . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.13 Writing concurrent programs in Promela . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.14 Supplement: the state diagram for the frog puzzle . . . . . . . . 37
3 The Critical Section Problem 45
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.2 The definition of the problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.3 First attempt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.4 Proving correctness with state diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.5 Correctness of the first attempt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.6 Second attempt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.7 Third attempt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.8 Fourth attempt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.9 Dekker’s algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.10 Complex atomic statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4 Verification of Concurrent Programs 67
4.1 Logical specification of correctness properties . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.2 Inductive proofs of invariants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.3 Basic concepts of temporal logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.4 Advanced concepts of temporal logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.5 A deductive proof of Dekker’s algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.6 Model checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.7 Spin and the Promela modeling language . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.8 Correctness specifications in Spin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.9 Choosing a verification technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5 Advanced Algorithms for the Critical Section Problem 93
5.1 The bakery algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5.2 The bakery algorithm for N processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.3 Less restrictive models of concurrency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
5.4 Fast algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5.5 Implementations in Promela . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Mordechai (Moti) Ben-Ari is an Associate Professor in the Department of Science Teaching at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. He is the author of texts on Ada, concurrent programming, programming languages, and mathematical logic, as well as Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science. In 2004 he was honored with the ACM/SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education.
Play
They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. It’s the same with your students. Meet each one right where they are with an engaging, interactive, personalized learning experience that goes beyond the textbook to fit any schedule, any budget, and any lifestyle.
Extend your professional development and meet your students where they are with free weekly Digital Learning NOW webinars. Attend live, watch on-demand, or listen at your leisure to expand your teaching strategies. Earn digital professional development badges for attending a live session.