Concepts of Concurrent Computation

Bertrand Meyer, Sebastian Nanz, Spring 2013

General

News

11.03.2013 — The project description is available. Please see the assignment in the project section.

22.02.2013 — The paper assignment has been completed. Please see the paper you have been assigned to in the seminar schedule.

19.02.2013 — The paper selection page is up. Please follow the instructions on the page to register your preferences by Friday, 22 February 2013, at 12:00.

12.12.2012 — The initial version of this page is up.

Course description

252-0268-00 Concepts of Concurrent Computation

Abstract: Concurrent programming is one of the major challenges in software development. The "Concepts of Concurrent Computation" course explores important models of concurrency, with a special emphasis on concurrent object-oriented programming and process calculi.

Objective: After completing this course, students will understand the principles and techniques of concurrent programming, supporting theories allowing formal reasoning about concurrent systems, and advances in concurrent object-oriented programming.

Content:

Grading: No Testat is delivered for the course. The assessment consists of a project (35%), a seminar talk (15%), and a written semester end exam (50%) for which no supporting material is allowed. The only way to get a grade is to take the written exam, deliver a seminar talk, and submit the project. This applies regardless of your department or status. The performance assessment is only offered at the end after the course unit. Repetition is only possible after re-enrolling.

Lecture layout: The course's lectures are of two different kinds: the Tuesday session (two hours) is a traditional lecture; the Wednesday lecture (one hour) is devoted to seminar talks, given either by well-known international experts in concurrency or by the student participants, based on research papers related to the topics of the course. The research papers to be presented will be assigned at the start of the course. Depending on the number of participants, some of the exercise sessions may also be used for seminar presentations.

Helping and getting help

Talk to the assistants or use the VIS forum.

Tools

For the development of SCOOP programs, we ask you to use version 7.1 of EiffelStudio. Once you installed EiffelStudio, follow the SCOOP practical matters guide to start a new project. To find example SCOOP programs, open the directory where you installed EiffelStudio and look for the folder examples/scoop. For the development of Java programs, you can use a Java development environment of your choice. For example, you can use Eclipse.

Textbooks

Further reading

Lecture and Seminar

Schedule

Day Time Location
Tuesday (Lecture) 10:15-12:00 RZ F 21
Wednesday (Seminar) 15:15-17:00 RZ F 21

Lecture

Date Lecture Title Slides Readings
Tuesday 19.2.2013 1 Welcome and introduction Final version pdf
Tuesday 26.2.2013 2 Challenges of concurrency Final version pdf Chapter 2
Tuesday 5.3.2013 3 Synchronization algorithms Final version pdf Chapter 3
Tuesday 12.3.2013 4 Semaphores Final version pdf Chapter 4
Tuesday 19.3.2013 5 SCOOP principles Final version pdf Chapter 9
Tuesday 26.3.2013 6 SCOOP type system Final version pdf Chapter 9
Tuesday 2.4.2013 no lecture Easter break
Tuesday 9.4.2013 7 Monitors Final version pdf Chapter 5
Tuesday 16.4.2013 8 CCS Final version pdf Chapter 7
Tuesday 23.4.2013 9 CCS advanced concepts Final version pdf Chapter 7
Tuesday 30.4.2013 10 CSP Final version pdf Chapter 6
Tuesday 7.5.2013 11 SCOOP outlook
Tuesday 14.5.2013 12 Lock-free approaches Final version pdf
Tuesday 21.5.2013 13 Languages for concurrency and parallelism Final version pdf  
Tuesday 28.5.2013 Exam

Temporary version = Temporary version Final version = Final version

Seminar

Date Presenter(s) Title
Wednesday 20.2.2013 Bertrand Meyer How to give a technical presentation [slides]
Wednesday 20.3.2013 Emanuele Rudel Paper 24 [Zhang et al., ISSTA'12] [slides]
Benjamin Bucheli Paper 21 [Hong et al., ISSTA'12] [slides]
Wednesday 27.3.2013 Ahmad Salim Al-Sibahi Paper 11 [Bocq and Daenen, OOPSLA'12] [slides]
Christian Klauser Paper 46 [Kasikci et al., ASPLOS'12] [slides]
Wednesday 10.4.2013 EirĂ­kur Fannar Torfason Paper 33 [Pradel and Gross, PLDI'12] [slides]
Hartmut Keil Paper 39 [Lochbihler, ESOP'12] [slides]
Wednesday 17.4.2013 Dominic Meier Paper 34 [Burckhardt, ESOP'12] [slides]
Karolos Antoniadis Paper 47 [Volos et al., ASPLOS'12] [slides]
Wednesday 24.4.2013 Roman Schmocker Paper 9 [Kumar et al., OOPSLA'12] [slides]
Paolo Antonucci Paper 7 [Okur et al., FSE'12] [slides]
Wednesday  8.5.2013 Moritz Hoffmann Paper 10 [Sartor and Eeckhout, OOPSLA'12] [slides]

Exercises

Schedule

Day Time Location
Wednesday (Exercise) 14:15-15:00 RZ F 21

Assignments

Date Title Material
Wednesday 20.2.2013 (no exercise class) (use the time for paper selection)
Wednesday 27.2.2013 Introduction and challenges of concurrency assignment solution Haiku
Wednesday 6.3.2013 Synchronization algorithms assignment solution TBME
Wednesday 13.3.2013 Semaphores assignment solution unisex bathroom precedence graph
Wednesday 20.3.2013 SCOOP principles assignment solution
Wednesday 27.3.2013 SCOOP type system assignment solution
Wednesday 10.4.2013 Monitors assignment solution unisex bathroom
Wednesday 17.4.2013 CCS assignment solution
Wednesday 24.4.2013 CCS advanced concepts assignment solution
Wednesday 8.5.2013 CSP assignment solution
Wednesday 15.5.2013 Lock-free approaches assignment solution
Wednesday 22.5.2013 Languages for concurrency and parallelism assignment

Assistants

Project

Please read the project assignment. The starting point for the visualization is available here.