Concurrency

From ArticleWorld

Concurrency is the characteristic computers have of being able to do more than one application at the same time.

In its simplest form, Concurrency is the ability computers have which allows a computer user to download a song, defragment his computer, chat online, receive email messages, type out a report, send a document for printing, etc., all at the same time. This ability extends to different, physically separated processors, working on a concurrent system, simultaneously accessing resources which are shared.

Benefits of concurrency

When we work on a computer, we typically assume that our computer can do several jobs for us simultaneously. We may access several sites on the internet to do research on the subject of an article that we need to submit, look up definitions of words used in the research, type out the start of the article, use the thesaurus to find the right words to use, while simultaneously defragmenting our computer, listening to music, and having the antivirus program scan the computer for any infections, The ability of our computer to do such jobs simultaneously is not a matter of surprise to us and is something that we have come to expect in this day and age.

Remember when a computer could perform only 2 or 3 operations at one time? When only 2 or 3 windows could be in use before the computer would hang? This roadblock was due to the different instructions (we were giving the computer) vying for the same process, operation, time, etc., on the computer. With the advances in concurrency, the computer user can now do more and more things at the same time without having this problem.

Concurrency and the future

As computers have improved in their ability to do things, and the speed with which these things can be done, more and more attention is being paid to concurrency. The speeds at which computers work cannot be increased forever. At some point the increase in speed must end. The speed must be finite. Concurrency will allow computers to do more and more operations simultaneously without affecting the speed.

Concurrency has even advanced to the point where several computers, at different physical locations, can access the same resources and work on the same problems without having to wait for one to finish accessing the resource or having to wait for each other. However, there is still a long way to go to really improve present day computers and make real use of the concurrency ability.