Concurrency by Default: Using Permissions to Express Dataflow in Stateful Programs

Authors

Abstract

The rise of the multicore era is catapulting concurrency into mainstream programming. Current programming paradigms build in sequentiality, and as a result, concurrency support in those languages forces programmers into low-level reasoning about execution order. In this paper, we introduce a new programming paradigm in which concurrency is the default. Our ÿMINIUM language uses access permissions to express logical dependencies in the code at a higher level of abstraction than sequential order. Therefore compiler/runtime-system can leverage that dependency information to allow concurrent execution. Because in ÿMINIUM programmers specify dependencies rather than control flow, there is no need to engage in difficult, error-prone, and low-level reasoning about execution order or thread interleavings. Developers can instead focus on the design of the program, and benefit as the runtime automatically extracts the concurrency inherent in their design.

Subject

Concurrent Programming