Ori Lahav: "Shared-memory concurrency in programming languages: Problems, challenges, solutions"

With the proliferation of multi-core processors, shared-memory concurrent programming has become increasingly important. Nevertheless, despite decades of research, there are still no adequate answers to the following fundamental questions:

1. What is the right semantics for concurrent programs in higher-level languages?
2. Which reasoning principles apply to realistic shared-memory concurrency?

Concerning the first question, the challenge lies in simultaneously allowing efficient implementation on modern hardware with compiler optimizations, while exposing a well-behaved programming model. Both the Java and C/C++ standards tried to address this question, but their solutions were discovered to be flawed. They either allow spurious "out-of-thin-air" program behaviors or incur a prohibitive runtime cost. In the main part of the talk, I will present a solution to this problem based on a novel idea of promises, which supports efficient implementations and useful programming guarantees.

As for the second question, I will outline my ongoing efforts to identify (i) logical laws for deductive reasoning about concurrent programs; and (ii) programming disciplines that enable the application of well-established verification techniques.