Paper Details

%T Fine\-grain Concurrency
%A Tony Hoare
%E Alistair A. McEwan, Steve Schneider, Wilson Ifill, Peter H. Welch
%B Communicating Process Architectures 2007
%X I have been interested in concurrent programming since about
   1963, when its associated problems contributed to the
   failure of the largest software project that I have managed.
   When I moved to an academic career in 1968, I hoped that I
   could find a solution to the problems by my research. Quite
   quickly I decided to concentrate on coarse\-grained
   concurrency, which does not allow concurrent processes to
   share main memory. The only interaction between processes is
   confined to explicit input and output commands. This
   simplification led eventually to the exploration of the
   theory of Communicating Sequential Processes. Since
   joining Microsoft Research in 1999, I have plucked up
   courage at last to look at fine\-grain concurrency,
   involving threads which interleave their access to main
   memory at the fine granularity of single instruction
   execution. By combining the merits of a number of different
   theories of concurrency, one can paint a relatively simple
   picture of a theory for the correct design of concurrent
   systems. Indeed, pictures are a great help in conveying the
   basic understanding. This paper presents some on\-going
   directions of research that I have been pursuing with
   colleagues in Cambridge &\[sh]8211; both at Microsoft
   Research and in the University Computing Laboratory.

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