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Concept
Concurrency (computer science)
Summary
In computer science, concurrency is the ability of different parts or units of a program, algorithm, or problem to be executed out-of-order or in partial order, without affecting the outcome. This allows for parallel execution of the concurrent units, which can significantly improve overall speed of the execution in multi-processor and multi-core systems. In more technical terms, concurrency refers to the decomposability of a program, algorithm, or problem into order-independent or partially-ordered components or units of computation.
According to Rob Pike, concurrency is the composition of independently executing computations, and concurrency is not parallelism: concurrency is about dealing with lots of things at once but parallelism is about doing lots of things at once. Concurrency is about structure, parallelism is about execution, concurrency provides a way to structure a solution to solve a problem that may (but not necessarily) be parallelizable.
A number of mathematical models have been developed for general concurrent computation including Petri nets, process calculi, the parallel random-access machine model, the actor model and the Reo Coordination Language.
As Leslie Lamport (2015) notes, "While concurrent program execution had been considered for years, the computer science of concurrency began with Edsger Dijkstra's seminal 1965 paper that introduced the mutual exclusion problem. ... The ensuing decades have seen a huge growth of interest in concurrency—particularly in distributed systems. Looking back at the origins of the field, what stands out is the fundamental role played by Edsger Dijkstra".
Because computations in a concurrent system can interact with each other while being executed, the number of possible execution paths in the system can be extremely large, and the resulting outcome can be indeterminate. Concurrent use of shared resources can be a source of indeterminacy leading to issues such as deadlocks, and resource starvation.
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Message Passing Interface
Message Passing Interface (MPI) is a standardized and portable message-passing standard designed to function on parallel computing architectures. The MPI standard defines the syntax and semantics of library routines that are useful to a wide range of users writing portable message-passing programs in C, C++, and Fortran. There are several open-source MPI implementations, which fostered the development of a parallel software industry, and encouraged development of portable and scalable large-scale parallel applications.
Concurrent computing
Concurrent computing is a form of computing in which several computations are executed concurrently—during overlapping time periods—instead of sequentially—with one completing before the next starts. This is a property of a system—whether a program, computer, or a network—where there is a separate execution point or "thread of control" for each process. A concurrent system is one where a computation can advance without waiting for all other computations to complete. Concurrent computing is a form of modular programming.
Process calculus
In computer science, the process calculi (or process algebras) are a diverse family of related approaches for formally modelling concurrent systems. Process calculi provide a tool for the high-level description of interactions, communications, and synchronizations between a collection of independent agents or processes. They also provide algebraic laws that allow process descriptions to be manipulated and analyzed, and permit formal reasoning about equivalences between processes (e.g., using bisimulation).