Concurrency: State Models & Java Programs

Concurrency is an area of software design that is vital in a wide range of applications where responsiveness are issues. They are especially important in the development of control systems. By their nature, concurrent programs are more complex, and therefore more difficult to reason than sequential programs. In order to ensure a thorough understanding of concurrency, concepts, techniques and problems are presented in many forms, through informal descriptions and illustrative examples, abstractly in models, and concretely in Java.

Concurrent Programs are notoriously difficult to get right. This book provides a systematic and practical approach to designing, analyzing and implementing concurrent programs. Concurrency concepts and techniques are introduced and illustrated using both state models and Java programs. The design models enable concurrent behavior to be animated, mechanically analyzed and then implemented in programs. With good support for concurrency, Java provides an ideal implementation language. Examples ranging from automobile cruise control to a game of space invaders are used throughout to motivate and illustrate the models and programs. Modeling is supported by a visual and interactive method for reasoning about design features. Programming is supported by interactive applets for experimenting with concurrent programs. This book and the CD-ROM which accompanies it provide readers with the means for understanding the fundamentals and practice of concurrency. Topics covered include:
* threads and interaction
* interference, exclusion and synchronization
* deadlock, safety and liveness properties
* message passing
* concurrent software architectures
* dynamic and timed systems.
The accompanying CD-ROM contains: the software analysis tools for modeling concurrency, model animation and model checking; the full set of state models, Java examples and demonstration programs; and a comprehensive series of overhead slides for course presentation.