CS 257 Schedule

Fri, Sep 22

Course intro

Wed, Sep 27

What state are we in? Discussion on language features, instant messaging
Read:

• Andrew Birrell, An Introduction to Programming with Threads

Fri, Sep 29

What state will we be in soon? Computer architecture and the future of concurrency (lecture, David Brooks)
Read:

• Poonacha Kongetira, Karthirgama Aingaran, and Kunle Olukotun, Niagara: A 32-Way Multithreaded SPARC Processor

Wed, Oct 4

How did we get into the state we are in? The roots of concurrency in the operating system (lecture, Matt Welsh)

Fri, Oct 6

Implementation: concurrency and exceptions as C libraries (discussion)
Read:

• Gordon Cormack, A Micro-Kernel for Concurrency in C
• Eric Roberts, Implementing Exceptions in C

Wed, Oct 11

Language design: Synchronous communication (discussion)
Read:

• Rob Pike, Newsqueak: A Language for Communicating with Mice
• Simon Peyton Jones, Andrew Gordon, and Sigbjorne Finne, Concurrent Haskell
• Doug Mcilroy, Squinting at Power Series

Fri, Oct 13

Applications (discussion)
Read:

• Rob Pike, A Concurrent Window System
• Simon Marlow, Developing a high-performance web server in Concurrent Haskell

Wed, Oct 18

Continue work from previous class

Fri, Oct 20

Recovering abstraction (John Reppy: Concurrent ML)
Read:

• John Reppy, First-class Synchronous Operations
• John Reppy, Concurrent ML: Design, Application, Semantics

Useful background reading before class:

• John Reppy, A Multithreaded Higher-order User Interface Toolkit

Wed, Oct 25

Model checking (Gerard Holzmann: SPIN)
Read:

• Gerard Holzmann, The Model Checker SPIN
• Gerard Holzmann, Reliable Design of Concurrent Software

Fri, Oct 27

Implementation of message passing
Read:

• Rob Pike, The Implementation of Newsqueak
• J. L. Armstrong, B. O. Daecker, S. R. Virding and M. C. Williams, Implementing a Functional Language for Highly Parallel Real-time Applications

Useful background reading before class:

• Joe Armstrong, The Development of Erlang

Wed, Nov 1

Implementation
Read:

• Rob von Behren, Jeremy Condit, Feng Zhou, George C. Necula, and Eric Brewer, Capriccio: Scalable Threads for Internet Services

Fri, Nov 3

Implementation
Read:

• Simon Peyton Jones, Extending the Haskell Foreign Function Interface with Concurrency
• Tim Harris, Simon Marlow, and Simon Peyton Jones, Haskell on a Shared­Memory Multiprocessor

We'll focus on the foreign-function paper, as the other is of interest primarily to Haskell specialists.

Wed, Nov 8

Atomicity: Machine instructions and memory management
Read:

• Olin Shivers, James W. Clark, and Roland McGrath, Atomic Heap Transactions and Fine-grain Interrupts
• Brian N. Bershad, David D. Redell, and John R. Ellis, Fast Mutual Exclusion for Uniprocessors

If garbage collection is new to you, check out Paul Wilson's survey article or Richard Jones's book.

Fri, Nov 10

More atomic memory allocation
Read:

• Maged M. Michael, Scalable Lock­Free Dynamic Memory Allocation

Wed, Nov 15

Dynamic race detection
Read:

• Stefan Savage, Michael Burrows, Greg Nelson, Patrick Sobalvarro, and Thomas Anderson, Eraser: A Dynamic Data Race Detector for Multithreaded Programs

Fri, Nov 17

Presentation of homework results

Wed, Nov 22

Types for atomicity
Read:

• Cormac Flanagan and Shaz Qadeer, A Type and Effect System for Atomicity

Fri, Nov 24

No class (Thanksgiving)

Wed, Nov 29

Dynamic checking for atomicity
Read:

• Cormac Flanagan and Stephen N. Freund, Atomizer: A Dynamic Atomicity Checker For Multithreaded Programs

Fri, Dec 1

Atomicity as a language feature: STM Haskell
Read:

• Tim Harris, Simon Marlow, Simon Peyton Jones, and Maurice Herlihy, Composable Memory Transactions

Wed, Dec 6

Transactional monitors
Read:

• Adam Welc, Suresh Jagannathan, and Antony L. Hosking, Transactional Monitors for Concurrent Objects

Fri, Dec 8

Memory models
Read:

• Jeremy Manson, William Pugh, and Sarita V. Adve, The Java Memory Model
• Hans-Juergen Boehm, Threads Cannot Be Implemented As a Library

Useful background reading before class:

• William Pugh, The Java Memory Model is Fatally Flawed
• Sarita V. Adve and Kourosh Gharachorloo, Shared Memory Consistency Models: A Tutorial

Wed, Dec 13

Pi calculus (from Milner, read sections 1,2,3 and section 5 up to and including section 5.2).
Read:

• Robin Milner, The Polyadic Pi-Calculus: a Tutorial

Useful background reading before class:

• Benjamin C. Pierce, Foundational Calculi for Programming Languages
• Jeannette M. Wing, FAQ on Pi-Calculus
• Robin Milner, Elements of Interaction

Fri, Dec 15

Asynchronous pi
Read:

• Benjamin C. Pierce and David N. Turner, Pict: A Programming Language Based on the Pi-Calculus