Course syllabus for Principles of Concurrent Programming

The course syllabus contains changes
See changes

Course syllabus adopted 2021-02-26 by Head of Programme (or corresponding).

Overview

  • Swedish namePrinciper för parallell programmering
  • CodeTDA384
  • Credits7.5 Credits
  • OwnerTKDAT
  • Education cycleFirst-cycle
  • Main field of studyComputer Science and Engineering, Software Engineering
  • DepartmentCOMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
  • GradingTH - Pass with distinction (5), Pass with credit (4), Pass (3), Fail

Course round 1

  • Teaching language English
  • Application code 49115
  • Block schedule
  • Open for exchange studentsYes
  • Only students with the course round in the programme overview.

Credit distribution

0117 Laboratory 3 c
Grading: UG		3 c
0217 Examination 4.5 c
Grading: TH		4.5 c
  • 26 Okt 2024 am J
  • 17 Mar 2025 pm J
  • 21 Aug 2025 pm J

In programmes

Examiner

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Course round 2

  • Teaching language English
  • Application code 49134
  • Block schedule
  • Open for exchange studentsYes
  • Only students with the course round in the programme overview.

Credit distribution

0117 Laboratory 3 c
Grading: UG		 3 c
0217 Examination 4.5 c
Grading: TH		 4.5 c
  • 17 Mar 2025 pm J
  • 21 Aug 2025 pm J

In programmes

Examiner

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Eligibility

General entry requirements for bachelor's level (first cycle)
Applicants enrolled in a programme at Chalmers where the course is included in the study programme are exempted from fulfilling the requirements above.

Specific entry requirements

The same as for the programme that owns the course.
Applicants enrolled in a programme at Chalmers where the course is included in the study programme are exempted from fulfilling the requirements above.

Course specific prerequisites

Knowledge in (propositional) logic.  Solid competence in Java.  Some knowledge in functional programming is also desired. For those without this knowledge the course will provide some tutorials, but students will then need to spend some extra time learning this paradigm.

Aim

Concurrent and parallel programming has become ubiquitous in modern software and systems, where concurrency is leveraged to exploit physical parallelism and speed up computations, to provide interactive multi-tasking, and to handle the interactions with asynchronous external events. This course aims to provide an introduction to the principles underlying concurrent systems, as well as to practical programming solutions for modeling and exploiting concurrency in programs. Domains where such principles and practices are relevant include operating systems, distributed systems, real-time systems, and multicore architectures.

Learning outcomes (after completion of the course the student should be able to)

Knowledge and understanding:
  • demonstrate knowledge of the issues and problems that arise in writing correct concurrent programs;
  • identify the problems of synchronization typical of concurrent programs, such as race conditions and mutual exclusion

Skills and abilities:
  • apply common patterns, such as lock, semaphores, and message-passing synchronization for solving concurrent program problems;
  • apply practical knowledge of the programming constructs and techniques offered by modern concurrent programming languages;
  • implement solutions using common patterns in modern programming languages

Judgment and approach:
  • evaluate the correctness, clarity, and efficiency of different solutions to concurrent programming problems;
  • judge whether a program, a library, or a data structure is safe for usage in a concurrent setting;
  • pick the right language constructs for solving synchronization and communication problems between computational units.

Content

  • Physical vs logical parallelism
  • Concurrency problems: race conditions, interference, deadlock, fairness, livelock
  • Mutual exclusion
  • Shared memory synchronization: using semaphores or fine grained locking
  • Message-passing synchronization: using message queues

Organisation

The course is organized in lectures and laboratory assignments.

Literature

The literature to be used is announced in advance on the course's home page. We often use "Principles of Concurrent and Distributed Programming (Second edition)", M. Ben-Ari, Addison-Wesley, 2006. ISBN 0-321-31283-X.

Examination including compulsory elements

The course is examined by an individual written exam (4.5 hec), carried-out in an examination hall, and laboratory assignments (3.0 hec) which are normally carried out in pairs of students. The complete course grade is then determined by the score of both the laboratory part and the written exam.

The course examiner may assess individual students in other ways than what is stated above if there are special reasons for doing so, for example if a student has a decision from Chalmers on educational support due to disability.

The course syllabus contains changes

  • Changes to course rounds:
    • 2024-10-01: Examinator Examinator changed from Gerardo Schneider (gersch) to Nir Piterman (piterman) by Viceprefekt/adm
      [Course round 2]
  • Changes to examination:
    • 2024-08-29: Examination datetime Examination datetime changed from 2025-01-08 Afternoon to 2025-03-17 Afternoon by Nir Piterman
      [2025-01-08 4,5 hec, 0217]
    • 2024-08-22: Cancelled Changed to cancelled by Nir Piterman
      [2025-01-08 4,5 hec, 0217] Cancelled