Difference between revisions of "Concurrency"

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* '''Basic concurrency: forkIO and MVars'''. Read [http://research.microsoft.com/Users/simonpj/papers/marktoberdorf/marktoberdorf.ps.gz Tackling the awkward squad: monadic input/output, concurrency, exceptions, and foreign-language calls in Haskell].<p>The [http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/papers/concurrent-haskell.ps.gz original paper about Concurrent Haskell] contains quite a few examples about how to write concurrent programs. A larger example is [http://www.haskell.org/~simonmar/papers/web-server.ps.gz Writing High-Performance Server Applications in Haskell, Case Study: A Haskell Web Server]
 
* '''Basic concurrency: forkIO and MVars'''. Read [http://research.microsoft.com/Users/simonpj/papers/marktoberdorf/marktoberdorf.ps.gz Tackling the awkward squad: monadic input/output, concurrency, exceptions, and foreign-language calls in Haskell].<p>The [http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/papers/concurrent-haskell.ps.gz original paper about Concurrent Haskell] contains quite a few examples about how to write concurrent programs. A larger example is [http://www.haskell.org/~simonmar/papers/web-server.ps.gz Writing High-Performance Server Applications in Haskell, Case Study: A Haskell Web Server]
 
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* '''Software Transactional Memory''' (STM) is a new way to coordinate concurrent threads. STM will be in GHC 6.6, and is described in the paper [http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/stm/index.htm Composable memory transactions]. The paper [http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/stm/lock-free.htm Lock-free data structures using Software Transactional Memory in Haskell] gives further examples of concurrent programming using STM.
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* [[Software transactional memory|'''Software Transactional Memory''']] (STM) is a new way to coordinate concurrent threads. STM will be in GHC 6.6, and is described in the paper [http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/stm/index.htm Composable memory transactions]. The paper [http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/stm/lock-free.htm Lock-free data structures using Software Transactional Memory in Haskell] gives further examples of concurrent programming using STM.
   
 
* '''Foreign function interface'''. If you are calling foreign functions in a concurrent program, you need to know about ''bound threads''. They are described in a Haskell workshop paper, [http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/Papers/conc-ffi/index.htm Extending the Haskell Foreign Function Interface with Concurrency].
 
* '''Foreign function interface'''. If you are calling foreign functions in a concurrent program, you need to know about ''bound threads''. They are described in a Haskell workshop paper, [http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/Papers/conc-ffi/index.htm Extending the Haskell Foreign Function Interface with Concurrency].

Revision as of 11:10, 30 June 2006

Concurrent programming in GHC

This page contains notes and information about how to write concurrent programs in GHC.

Please feel free to add stuff here (Edit page link at the bottom).

Starting points


Using concurrency in GHC

  • The GHC manual gives a few useful flags that control scheduling (not usually necessary) RTS options.


Multiprocessor GHC

As of version 6.5, GHC supports running programs in parallel on an SMP or multi-core machine. How to do it:

  • You need to link your program using the -threaded switch. (NOTE: previously it was necessary to compile all code, including libraries, with the -smp switch, this is no longer the case. The -smp flag is now a synonym for -threaded).
  • Run the program with +RTS -N2 to use 2 threads, for example. You should use a -N value equal to the number of CPU cores on your machine (not including Hyper-threading cores).
  • Concurrent threads (forkIO and forkOS) will run in parallel, and you can also use the par combinator and Strategies from the Control.Parallel.Strategies module to create parallelism.
  • Use +RTS -sstderr for timing stats.

Links to related work on parallel and distributed Haskell (many based on GHC)