Foundations of Multithreaded, Parallel, and Distributed Programming [Paperback]

Gregory R. Andrews (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 10, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0201357526 | ISBN-13: 978-0201357523 | Edition: 1

Foundations of Multithreaded, Parallel, and Distributed Programming covers, and then applies, the core concepts and techniques needed for an introductory course in this subject. Its emphasis is on the practice and application of parallel systems, using real-world examples throughout. Greg Andrews teaches the fundamental concepts of multithreaded, parallel and distributed computing and relates them to the implementation and performance processes. He presents the appropriate breadth of topics and supports these discussions with an emphasis on performance.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Foundations of Multithreaded, Parallel, and Distributed Programming covers, and then applies, the core concepts and techniques needed for an introductory course in this subject. Its emphasis is on the practice and application of parallel systems, using real-world examples throughout.

Greg Andrews teaches the fundamental concepts of multithreaded, parallel and distributed computing and relates them to the implementation and performance processes. He presents the appropriate breadth of topics and supports these discussions with an emphasis on performance.

Features

• Emphasizes how to solve problems, with correctness the primary concern and performance an important, but secondary, concern
• Includes a number of case studies which cover such topics as pthreads, MPI, and OpenMP libraries, as well as programming languages like Java, Ada, high performance Fortran, Linda, Occam, and SR
• Provides examples using Java syntax and discusses how Java deals with monitors, sockets, and remote method invocation
• Covers current programming techniques such as semaphores, locks, barriers, monitors, message passing, and remote invocation
• Concrete examples are executed with complete programs, both shared and distributed
• Sample applications include scientific computing and distributed systems

0201357526B04062001

About the Author

Gregory Andrews received a B.S. degree in Mathematics from Stanford University in 1969 and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 1974. From 1974-79 he was an Assistant Professor at Cornell University. Since 1979 he has been at The University of Arizona, where he is currently Professor of Computer Science. From 1986-93 he chaired the department; in 1986 he received a distinguished teaching award.

Greg has been on the editorial board of Information Processing Letters since 1979. He was the general chair of the Twelfth ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in 1989 and has been on the program committees of numerous conferences. From 1988-92 he was on advisory committees for the computing directorate of the National Science Foundation. Since 1991 he has been on the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association (CRA).

Greg's research interests include all aspects of concurrent programming. A long-term project has been the design and implementation of the SR programming language. Current work focuses on the development of Filaments, a software package that provides efficient fine-grain parallelism on a variety of parallel machines.

0201357526AB04062001

Product Details

• Paperback: 664 pages
• Publisher: Addison Wesley; 1 edition (December 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201357526
• ISBN-13: 978-0201357523
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #574,643 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #100 in Books > Computers & Technology > Hardware > Parallel Processing Computers

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an excellent intro to medium book on parallel programming, April 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Foundations of Multithreaded, Parallel, and Distributed Programming (Paperback)

The book provides all material needed for a beginner to easily acquire knowledge required for development and beginner's research in the field of parallel computation. It's written though not for a beginner in programming, solid basics and initial knowledge of OS internals are prerequisites. I found it's easy to read and understand with a mass of useful examples and with coverage of MPI and Java. This was especially important to since it bridges the theory in the earlier sections with practical implementations using production environment tools. In overall I strongly recommend it for those who are new to the field. For a more deep discussion on parallel algorithms one may want to look at F.T. Leighton's "Intro to Parallel Algorithms and Architectures: Arrays, Trees, Hypercubes" - that one is much more technical though.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dr. Andrews knows this topic, July 21, 2009

By 

B. Baker (Tucson, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Foundations of Multithreaded, Parallel, and Distributed Programming (Paperback)

The author of this text, Dr. Andrews, has dealt with the theory and implementation of parallel/multithreaded/distributed in computer systems since the 70s. I was fortunate to take his class at the University of Arizona in which this book was used as the primary text.

Unlike many textbooks of its ilk, Dr. Andrews does use coded examples, but they are not complex code excerpts that span several pages. He does an excellent job of covering the topic in both C with Posix, Java, as well as the language he worked on MPD. Since this topic has been his primary focus he really knows the subject matter yet can explain it in a way such that anyone with moderate programming skills can grasp.

Just like his lectures, the fundamentals and theory presented in each chapter is always structured, explained, and numerous examples are given to reinforce the topics that are being taught. I would recommend this book to anyone who requires an introductory to medium exposure to the critical topic of multithreaded, parallel and distributed programming.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good book, November 17, 2010

By 

W. Ghost (Brazil) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Foundations of Multithreaded, Parallel, and Distributed Programming (Paperback)

This book is clear, easy to read and nicely organized.

The contents are summarized below:

Chapter 1 begins with an introduction to concurrent computing;
PART I: SHARED MEMORY
Chapter 2 explains processes and synchronization, including a very easy introduction to axiomatic semantics;
Chapter 3 explains locks and barriers (both use and implementation);
Chapter 4 is dedicated to semaphores and their use (examples of use include mutual exclusion, barriers, producer/consumer, reader/writers);
Chapter 5 is about monitors, and this is where condition variables are introduced (they're not treated separately as in POSIX, but the author does mention POSIX mutexes+cond.vars approach). Examples include bounded buffer, readers/writer, interval timer, sleeping barber, and a disck scheduling system. There is a section on Java and another one on pthreads;
Chapter 6 goes into details of implementation of semaphores and monitors;
PART II: DISTRIBUTED PROGRAMMING
Chapter 7 is about message passing -- first asynchronous then synchronous. Case studies include CSP, Linda, MPI and Java;
Chapter 8 goes into RPC and rendezvous, and case studies are Ada, SR and Java. The examples here include a remote database andsorting network;
Chapter 9 deals with ways in which processes may interact. Here the author uses as examples sparse matrix multiplication, cellular automata, and other problems;
Chapter 10 is about implementation details of message-passing mechanisms, RPC and distributed shared memory;
PART III: PARALLEL PROGRAMMING
Chapter 11 is about scientific computing (number-crunching stuff). Grid computing, particle computations, matrix computations;
Chapter 12 discusses MPI, parallelzing compilers, programming languages and tools and their support for concurrent programming.


Each chapter has a section with historical notes, references and LOTS of exercises.