multi-core software

[Arved Sandstrom]

Lew wrote:
> Jon Harrop wrote:
>> I agree entirely but my statements were about parallelism and not
>> concurrency. Parallel and concurrent programming have wildly different
>> characteristics and solutions. I don't believe shared mutable state is
>> overly problematic in the context of parallelism. Indeed, I think it is
>> usually the best solution in that context.
> 
> Interesting distinction.  Would it be fair to compare concurrent 
> programming to the bricks used to build the parallel program's edifice?

Way too much of a fine distinction. While they are in fact different, 
the point of concurrent programming is to structure programs as a group 
of computations, which can be executed in parallel (however that might 
actually be done depending on how many processors there are). Parallel 
computing means to carry out many computations simultaneously. These are 
interleaved definitions. And they are *not* wildly different.

If you talk about shared mutable state, it is not as easy to use as Dr 
Harrop seems to think it is. Maybe in his experience it has been, but in 
general it's no trivial thing to manage. Lew, you probably summarized it 
best a few posts upstream.

AHS