Category: Concurrency

Effective Concurrency: How Much Scalability Do You Have or Need?

The second Effective Concurrency column in DDJ just went live. It’s titled "How Much Scalability Do You Have or Need?" and makes the case that there’s more than just one important category of throughput scalability, and one size does not fit all. From the article:
In your application, how many independent pieces of work are ready to run at any given time? Put another way, how many cores (or hardware threads, or nodes) can your code harness to get its answers faster? And when should the answers to these questions not be "as many as possible"?
I hope you enjoy it.
Next month’s article is already in post-production. It will be titled "Use Critical Regions (Preferably Locks) to Eliminate Races" and will hit the web about a month from now. One of the early questions it answers is, How bad can a race be? There’s a hint in the article’s tagline: "In a race no one can hear you scream…"
Finally, here are some links to last month’s Effective Concurrency column and to a prior locking article of interest that provides a nice background motivation for the next few EC articles to come starting next month:

EC: A new column on Effective Concurrency

I’m pleased to say that I’m starting a new column on Effective Concurrency in DDJ, and the first installment just went live.
It’s titled "The Pillars of Concurrency" and tries to make the case that we need to have a consistent mental model for talking about concurrency issues if we’re going to make any serious headway in designing and using concurrent systems. In particular, as the article notes:
Have you ever talked with another developer about concurrency, and felt as though you were somehow speaking completely different languages? If so, you’re not alone. You can see the confusion in our vocabulary…
Next month’s article is already in post-production. It’s titled "How Much Scalability Do You Have or Need?" and it’ll be online about a month from now. I’ll let you know here once it hits the web.
And who knows? If this newfangled essential-Items-at-3-to-5-pages-each format turns out to be popular, there just might eventually be a book here…