Concurrent Systems

Question 1

What is a Concurrent System?

Answer 1

Several components working at any time

Question 2

Name two advantages of Concurrent Systems

Answer 2

Processing can go faster

Can sometimes be easier to program than sequential systems

Question 3

Name two disadvantages of Concurrent Systems

Answer 3

Components can interfere with each other

Components need to communicate

Question 4

Describe what is meant by Concurrent Programming

Answer 4

Writing programs which allow different parts of a system to execute concurrently and to co-operate

Question 5

In terms of Concurrent Systems, What is Multitasking?

Answer 5

e.g. two (single threaded) applications running on a PC – editor and file manager
executing independently but can interact (e.g. dragging a file to the editor)

Question 6

What is Multithreading?

Answer 6

can consider a thread as we consider a process

a program can consist of multiple ‘threads’ (running in a Java Virtual Machine (JVM))

Question 7

Name two main types of Synchronisation?

Answer 7

mutual exclusion

condition synchronisation