An Introduction to
Concurrency: Practice and Experience
by Geoffrey Fox
Aims and Goals
Concurrency is seen in an increasing number of computing and
communication systems. We have tens of millions of clients on the World
Wide Web and many thousands of powerful nodes in high-end massively
parallel machines (MPP). One can project continued rapid progress within
ten years, Exaop performance from the Web and Petaflop capabilities
in closely coupled parallel machines. This leads to a confusing rich
choice of architectures with distributed memory PC clusters or
Web-based computers and shared memory MPP's. These are enabled and
coupled with corresponding boosts in wide-area network performance
and deployment with a blurring and convergence of computing and
communication. This hardware juggernaut is coupled to new languages and
programming paradigms, such as Java and VRML for the Web and
multithreading HPF and MPI for parallel systems. The combination of
concurrent digital and optical technology is expected to create a
Global Information Infrastructure (GII) that will enable new
applications, and open up a new set of communication and computer
software and architecture challenges. We need portable and scalable
(portable to the future and to hybrid heterogeneous world-wide systems)
solutions. This technology is being driven by and used in a wide range
of academic, research, and commercial application areas. This use is
producing a substantial amount of practical experience in those
problems that are enabled or enhanced by this amazing infrastructure.
There are also new computational methods, such as mobile agents,
cellular automata and massively parallel neural networks, which are
particularly suited to concurrent execution. There is a rapid growth in
both scientific (grand challenges) and information (national challenge)
applications that drive both the functionality and high performance of
the base technologies. These will impact academia, business, the homes
and education. New applications are also being opened up by advances in
human-computer interfaces with full immersive environments becoming
available, and tools to support those with disabilities broadening the
reach of the computer and communication revolution. This journal will,
therefore, focus on practical experience with the application of these
converging trends to solve real problems. In particular, themes of our
papers include:
- Concurrent solutions to specific problems in academia, industry and
society
- Concurrent algorithms and computational methods
- Programming environments, operating systems, tools, concurrent
languages, compilers, interpreters
- Performance prediction, analysis, models and results
- Applications, and algorithm and software technologies arising from
the World Wide Web including novel areas, such as education
- Unification of computing and communication; unification of parallel
and distributed computing
Return to CPE Homepage
Comments to:
gcf@npac.syr.edu