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Concurrency vs. Parallelism - A Brief View: Madhavan Nagarajan

This document discusses the differences between concurrency and parallelism. Concurrency means that multiple tasks are making progress at the same time, but not necessarily simultaneously. Parallelism means that tasks are split into subtasks that can be processed simultaneously on multiple CPUs. An application can be concurrent without being parallel if tasks overlap but do not execute simultaneously. True parallelism requires hardware with multiple processing units that allow simultaneous task execution.

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30 views

Concurrency vs. Parallelism - A Brief View: Madhavan Nagarajan

This document discusses the differences between concurrency and parallelism. Concurrency means that multiple tasks are making progress at the same time, but not necessarily simultaneously. Parallelism means that tasks are split into subtasks that can be processed simultaneously on multiple CPUs. An application can be concurrent without being parallel if tasks overlap but do not execute simultaneously. True parallelism requires hardware with multiple processing units that allow simultaneous task execution.

Uploaded by

jkvnse
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Concurrency vs. Parallelism


— A brief view
Madhavan Nagarajan Dec 2, 2019 · 5 min read

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Concurrency vs. Parallelism — A brief view | by Madh... https://medium.com/@itIsMadhavan/concurrency-vs-par...

Recently, I was watching a video about concurrency and


parallelism. When I started explaining myself about this I
ended up in other related concepts and nomenclatures such
as Threads -> Multi-threaded and Single, Asynchronous and
Synchronous. At a point, I was confused with queries like:

How is concurrency related to parallelism?

What is synchronous and asynchronous execution?

How do you distinguish between concurrent & parallel?

How threads fit along with all these concepts?

Many of us sometimes get confused with such queries.

Hold on for a moment and I will try to answer the concurrency


and parallelism queries and visualize the concepts.

Concurrency
Concurrency means that an application is making progress on
more than one task at the same time (concurrently). Well, if the
computer only has one CPU the application may not make
progress on more than one task at exactly the same time, but
more than one task is being processed at a time inside the

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application. It does not completely finish one task before it


begins the next.

let's take an example in real life: There’s a challenge that


requires you to both eat a whole huge cake and sing a whole
song. You’ll win if you’re the fastest who sings the whole song
and finishes the cake. So the rule is that you sing and eat
simultaneously, How you do that does not belong to the rule.
You can eat the whole cake, then sing the whole song, or you
can eat half a cake, then sing half a song, then do that again,
etc.

Concurrency means executing multiple tasks at the same time


but not necessarily simultaneously. There are two tasks
executing concurrently, but those are run in a 1-core CPU, so
the CPU will decide to run a task first and then the other task
or run half a task and half another task, etc. Two tasks can
start, run, and complete in overlapping time periods i.e Task-2
can start even before Task-1 gets completed. It all depends on
the system architecture.

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Concurrency vs. Parallelism — A brief view | by Madh... https://medium.com/@itIsMadhavan/concurrency-vs-par...

Concurrency means executing multiple tasks at the same time


but not necessarily simultaneously.

Parallelism
Parallelism means that an application splits its tasks up into
smaller subtasks which can be processed in parallel, for
instance on multiple CPUs at the exact same time.

Parallelism does not require two tasks to exist. It literally


physically run parts of tasks OR multiple tasks, at the same
time using the multi-core infrastructure of CPU, by assigning
one core to each task or sub-task.

If we keep going with the same example as above, the rule is


still singing and eating concurrently, but this time, you play in
a team of two. You probably will eat and let your friend sing
(because she sings better and you eat better). So this time, the
two tasks are really executed simultaneously, and it’s called
parallel.

Parallelism requires hardware with multiple processing units,


essentially. In single-core CPU, you may get concurrency but
NOT parallelism. Parallelism is a specific kind of concurrency
where tasks are really executed simultaneously.

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Concurrency vs. Parallelism — A brief view | by Madh... https://medium.com/@itIsMadhavan/concurrency-vs-par...

What is the difference between parallel programming and


concurrent programming?
Now let’s list down remarkable differences between
concurrency and parallelism.

For instance, The Art of Concurrency defines the difference as


follows:

A system is said to be concurrent if it can support two or more


actions in progress at the same time. A system is said to be
parallel if it can support two or more actions executing
simultaneously.

The key concept and difference between these definitions is


the phrase “in progress.”

This definition says that, in concurrent systems, multiple


actions can be in progress (may not be executed) at the same
time. Meanwhile, multiple actions are simultaneously executed
in parallel systems. In fact, concurrency and parallelism are
conceptually overlapped to some degree, but “in progress”
clearly makes them different.

Concurrency is about dealing with lots of things at once.


Parallelism is about doing lots of things at once.

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Concurrency vs. Parallelism — A brief view | by Madh... https://medium.com/@itIsMadhavan/concurrency-vs-par...

An application can be concurrent — but not parallel, which


means that it processes more than one task at the same time,
but no two tasks are executing at the same time instant.

An application can be parallel — but not concurrent, which


means that it processes multiple sub-tasks of a task in multi-
core CPU at the same time.

An application can be neither parallel — nor concurrent, which


means that it processes all tasks one at a time, sequentially.

An application can be both parallel — and concurrent, which


means that it processes multiple tasks concurrently in multi-
core CPU at the same time.

Summary
I recommend using the term “parallel” when the simultaneous
execution is assured or expected, and to use the term
“concurrent” when it is uncertain or irrelevant if simultaneous
execution will be employed.

I would, therefore, describe simulating a jet engine on multiple


cores as parallel.

Say you want to compress n text files and generate a


compressed file for each of them. You can have from 2 (up to

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Concurrency vs. Parallelism — A brief view | by Madh... https://medium.com/@itIsMadhavan/concurrency-vs-par...

n) threads that each handle compressing a subset of the files.


When each thread is done, it’s just done, it doesn’t have to wait
or do anything else. So, since different tasks are performed in
an interleaved manner in “any arbitrary order” the program is
concurrent but not parallel.

Distinguishing parallelism from concurrency is important to


seek a fitting way to solve large scale problems, but they are
considered interchangeable in reality. The definitions provided
are tremendously valuable to figure out the very similar but
different two paradigms. It is worth watching the video about
concurrency and parallelism as this talks more deep with
better example(in the context of GO)
Programming Operating Systems Advanced Concurrency Parallel Computing

Thanks for reading � �.

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