HELP! * GREY=local LOCAL HTML version of Foils prepared July 10 1996

Foil 106 Initial Remarks on Threads

From Basic Lectures on Java Language Applets Graphics Networking Trip to China and Icase Tutorial -- July 12-28 and June 10-13 96. by Geoffrey C. Fox * See also color IMAGE

Java is remarkable for threads being built into the language
Threads are processes which are typically "light-weight" (unlike UNIX processes) which communicate by a combination of shared memory and messaging
  • This communication mechanism is what you get from natural access to methods and variables in Java classes
The Java Threads do not give all you want and for those coming from an HPCC background, we note Java threads have no immediate support for some key parallel computing concepts (see work of Chandy at Caltech) and distributed memory (threads running in separate operating system instances)
Java threads are based on basic monitors ("lock mechanism") for synchronization which was introduced by Hoare



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