The Art of Multiprocessor Programming

Advances in technology have brought new architectures and with them the serious challenge of producing the very necessary software.

New programming languages and tools are required and, ofcourse, the expertise to use them must be gained by system researchers and developers. When parallel computers were first mooted there was consternation amongst computer scientists whether to invent new programming techniques or try to adapt the ones already proven on single processor machines. Existing software written for the computers of the day would obviously work on parallel machines, but would they work efficiently and take advantage of the second processors? Now many of the challenges of that era have been overcome and we are now faced with multiprocessor configured in many different arrays.

This book by Herlihy and Shavit is a contribution concerned with the new tools that are available for multiprocessor machines. They refer to their subject as an “art” and who can disagree?

It may be an art but surely one which has the benefit of the experience of previous programming systemists.

It is an extensive text and accordingly provides a comprehensive study of both the concepts and principle involved as well as a guide to the current set of tools to hand.

This is a subject which has already attracted the attention of computer science and software in academia which sees it as a topic sufficiently important to base a whole degree course around. Some UK universities, for example, have been advertising such courses, not as “Multiprocessing Programming” courses but as “Computer Game Machine Programming” degrees.

With such interest the need for books for undergraduate studies in multiprocessor programming should ensure a wide readership.

Game consoles will all be multiprocessor‐based in the future and the manufacturers and software developers will need both researchers and technical staff who can understand such machines.

This book therefore has a market waiting for it. There will obviously be many more such books written as a direct response to this new direction in programming computing machines.