Monitors and Concurrent Pascal

Hansen, Per Brinch

doi:10.1145/234286.1057814

Cited by 8 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…Squeak Smalltalk [4] includes an implementation of monitors [5], a common approach to synchronize the use of shared data among different processes. In contrast to mutual exclusion with the reentrant lock, with monitors, a process can wait inside its critical section for other resources while temporarily releasing the monitor.…”

Section: The Need For Transactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transactional memory for smalltalk

Renggli

Nierstrasz

2007

Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Dynamic Languages: In Conjunction With the 15th International Smalltalk Joi

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Abstract. Concurrency control in Smalltalk is based on locks and is therefore notoriously difficult to use. Even though some implementations provide high-level constructs, these add complexity and potentially hard-to-detect bugs to the application. Transactional memory is an attractive mechanism that does not have the drawbacks of locks, however the underlying implementation is often difficult to integrate into an existing language. In this paper we show how we have introduced transactional semantics in Smalltalk by using the reflective facilities of the language. Our approach is based on method annotations, incremental parse tree transformations and an optimistic commit protocol. We report on a practical case study, benchmarks and further and on-going work. Only a few current Smalltalk implementations provide more sophisticated synchronization support. VisualWorks Smalltalk provides a reentrant lock implementation that enables a process to enter the same critical section multiple times. Other processes get blocked until the owning process leaves the critical section. Unfortunately this kind of synchronization has its drawbacks and is notoriously difficult to use [3]:Deadlocks. If there are cyclic dependencies between resources and processes, applications may deadlock. This problem can be avoided by acquiring resources in a fixed order, however in practice this is often difficult to achieve. Starvation. A process that never leaves a critical section, due to a bug in the software or an unforeseen error, will continue to hold the lock forever. Other processes that would like to enter the critical section starve.

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Section: The Need For Transactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transactional memory for smalltalk

Renggli

Nierstrasz

2007

Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Dynamic Languages: In Conjunction With the 15th International Smalltalk Joi

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“…In his HOPL-II article on Concurrent Pascal, Brinch Hansen relates how "the idea of monitors evolved through discussions and communications among E. J. Dijkstra, C.A.R. Hoare, and me (Brinch Hansen) during the summer and fall of 1971" [Hansen 1996]. Influenced by the work of Dahl in Simula 67, the concurrency model of Concurrent Pascal, developed in the mid-1970s, refined the definition of monitors into a key language construct [Hansen 1972[Hansen , 1975.…”

Section: Concurrencymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Influenced by the work of Dahl in Simula 67, the concurrency model of Concurrent Pascal, developed in the mid-1970s, refined the definition of monitors into a key language construct [Hansen 1972[Hansen , 1975. Brinch Hansen describes a monitor as "a set of shared procedures which can delay and activate individual processes and perform operations on shared data" [Hansen 1996]. Conceptually, monitors can be viewed as an extension of the idea of an abstract data type to a concurrency setting.…”

Section: Concurrencymentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of software engineering research on modern programming languages

Ryder

Soffa

Burnett

2005

ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol.

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Software engineering research and programming language design have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship, with traceable impacts since the 1970s, when these areas were first distinguished from one another. This report documents this relationship by focusing on several major features of current programming languages: data and procedural abstraction, types, concurrency, exceptions, and visual programming mechanisms. The influences are determined by tracing references in publications in both fields, obtaining oral histories from language designers delineating influences on them, and tracking cotemporal research trends and ideas as demonstrated by workshop topics, special issue publications, and invited talks in the two fields. In some cases there is conclusive This article has been developed under the auspices of the Impact Project. The aim of the project is to provide a scholarly study of the impact that software engineering research-both academic and industrial-has had upon practice. The principal output of the project is a series of individual papers covering the impact upon practice of research in several selected major areas of software engineering. Each of these papers is being published in ACM TOSEM. Additional information about the project can be found at http://www.acm.org/sigsoft/impact/. This article is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under award number CCF-0137766, the Association of Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Software Engineering (ACM SIGSOFT), the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), and the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Association (JEITA). Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations, expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect, of the NSF, ACM SIGSOFT, the IEE, or JEITA. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or direct commercial advantage and that copies show this notice on the first page or initial screen of a display along with the full citation. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, to redistribute to lists, or to use any component of this work in other works requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Permissions may be requested from Publications Dept., ACM, Inc., 1515 Broadway, New York, NY 10036 USA, fax: +1 (212) 869-0481, or permissions@acm.org. data supporting influence. In other cases, there are circumstantial arguments (i.e., cotemporal ideas) that indicate influence. Using this approach, this study provides evidence of the impact of software engineering research on modern programming language design and documents the close relationship between these two fields.

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“…Squeak Smalltalk [6] includes an implementation of monitors [7], a common approach to synchronize the use of shared data among different processes. In contrast to mutual exclusion with reentrant locks, with monitors, a process can wait inside its critical section for other resources while temporarily releasing the monitor.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%