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Session 1520

An Invariant Pattern-based Approach to Develop Concurrent Programs

M. Mizuno 1, G. Singh 1, M.L. Neilsen 1, D.H. Lenhert 2, N. Zhang 3, and A.B. Gross4 1 Department of Computing and Information Sciences, Kansas State University (KSU) {masaaki,singh,neilsen}@cis.ksu.edu * 2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, KSU, lenhert@ksu.edu * 3 Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, KSU, zhangn@ksu.edu * 4 The IDEA Center, 211 S. Seth Child Road, Manhattan, Kansas, agross@ksu.edu*

Abstract

In recent years, the importance of concurrent programming has increased. However, many programmers are not appropriately trained to write correct and efficient concurrent programs. The techniques that most Operating Systems (OS) textbooks teach are ad-hoc, and such ad-hoc techniques are far too error-prone for solving complex synchronization problems. The global invariant approach developed by G. Andrews is much more formal and structured, and we have been teaching this approach since 1992 at Kansas State University. One possible drawback of the invariant approach is the difficulty to identify an appropriate invariant for a given synchronization requirement. To cope with this problem, we have developed a set of useful synchronization patterns and their solution invariants. Using the patterns, we can solve a wide-variety of synchronization problems found in many advanced OS textbooks. In Fall 2001, we successfully taught our pattern-based approach in our graduate-level OS course. In this paper, we will present our methodology and report qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the methodology by students in the classroom setting.

1 Introduction

In recent years, concurrent programming has become the norm rather than the exception in many applications. The advantage of concurrent programming is that an individual thread (or process) is written as a sequential program focusing only on its sequential activities, and the coordination among activities by different threads is localized to a small amount of synchronization code.

* This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under NSF-CRCD Grant #9980321 and DARPA Order K203/AFRL #F33615-00-C-3044.

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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Mizuno, M. (2002, June), An Invariant Pattern Based Approach To Develop Concurrent Programs Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10445