On a Method of Multiprogramming

by W.H.J. Feijen, D. Gries (Foreword by), A.J.M. van Gasteren

Overview

Among all the interests in parallelism, there is an essential and fundamental one that has remained largely unexplored, namely the question of how to design parallel programs from their specification. And that is what this book is about. It proposes a method for the formal development of parallel programs - multiprograms as we have preferred to call them -, and it does so with a minimum of formal gear, viz. with the predicate calculus and with the meanwhile well-established theory of Owicki and Gries. The fact that one can get away with just this theory will probably not convey anything to the uninitiated, but it may all the more come as a surprise to those who were exposed earlier to correctness of multiprograms. Contrary to common belief, the Owicki/Gries theory can indeed be effectively put to work for the formal development of multiprograms, regardless of whether these algorithms are distributed or not. That is what we intend to exemplify with this book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441931795
Publisher:	Springer New York
Publication date:	12/01/2010
Series:	Monographs in Computer Science
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of hardcover 1st ed. 1999
Pages:	370
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.24(d)

Table of Contents

1 On Our Computational Model.- 2 Our Program Notation and Its Semantics.- 3 The Core of the Owicki/Gries Theory.- 4 Two Disturbing Divergences.- 5 Bridling the Complexity.- 6 Co-assertions and Strengthening the Annotation.- 7 Three Theorems and Two Examples.- 8 Synchronization and Total Deadlock.- 9 Individual Progress and the Multibound.- 10 Concurrent Vector Writing.- 11 More Theorems and More Examples.- 12 The Yellow Pages.- 13 The Safe Sluice.- 14 Peterson’s Two-Component Mutual Exclusion Algorithm.- 15 Re-inventing a Great Idea.- 16 On Handshake Prools.- 17 Phase Synchronization for Two Machines.- 18 The Parallel Linear Search.- 19 The Initialization Prool.- 20 Co-components.- 21 The Initialization Prool Revisited.- 22 The Non-Blocking Write Prool.- 23 Mutual Inclusion and Synchronous Communication.- 24 A Simple Election Algorithm.- 25 Peterson’s General Mutual Exclusion Algorithm.- 26 Monitored Phase Synchronization.- 27 Distributed Liberal Phase Synchronization.- 28 Distributed Computation of a Spanning Tree.- 29 Shmuel Safra’s Termination Detection Algorithm.- 30 The Alternating Bit Prool.- 31 Peterson’s Mutual Exclusion Algorithm Revisited.- 32 Epilogue.- References.