Entry requirements

120 credits of which at least 60 in computer science including imperative and object-oriented programming. Functional programming is recommended or can be studied in parallel with the course.

Learning outcomes

To pass the course, the student should be able to

• write and modify programs using different models and language abstractions for concurrent and parallel programming,
• analyse models with respect to which specific problems they address, where they can be used and where they should be avoided,
• explain the difference between a model and its implementation in a specific language,
• explain how some languages implement hybrids or multiple models and how these can interact.

Content

Some different models for concurrency and parallel programming, e.g., threads and locks (to understand what problems other models solve), transactional memories, actors, side-effect-free combinators and map-reduce, fork/join frameworks, dataparallelism. A number of different programming languages to illustrate these models, such as C, Java, Erlang. Laboratory work that highlights strengths and weaknesses of the models.

Closer study of a model and its implementation in some language to be used as a basis for comparisons between models.

Instruction

Lectures, labs, tutoring during project work.

Assessment

Oral and writen assessment of assignments, 7 credits, and project work, 3 credits.