multi-core software

[Arved Sandstrom]

Jon Harrop wrote:
> Arved Sandstrom wrote:
>> Jon Harrop wrote:
>>> Arved Sandstrom wrote:
>>>> Lew wrote:
>>>>> 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).
>>> No. Concurrent programming is about interleaving computations in order to
>>> reduce latency. Nothing to do with parallelism.
>> Jon, I do concurrent programming all the time, as do most of my peers.
>> Way down on the list of why we do it is the reduction of latency.
> 
> What is higher on the list?

Correctness.

I'm not being facetious. I write applications that run on application 
servers, and from time to time I have had to write various special 
purpose servers. This kind of programming is all about managing 
concurrent execution of computations. The overarching concern is 
reliability and correct function. For many corporate situations, even 
with hundreds of users, the actual load at any instant is low enough 
that the various servers involved are nowhere close to being stressed 
out - performance is a secondary issue.

AHS