The Eric Normand Podcast What is the difference between parallelism and concurrency?
Aug 19, 2019
Dive into the fascinating world of computing with a clear distinction between parallelism and concurrency. Discover how concurrency focuses on the safe sharing of resources among processes, while parallelism enhances performance by adding more resources. This insightful discussion sheds light on the vital roles these concepts play in functional programming, sparking curiosity about efficient resource management. Get ready to improve your understanding of these essential programming paradigms!
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Concurrency Defined
- Concurrency is the ability to share limited resources, like CPUs, memory, databases, or thread pools, safely and efficiently.
- It involves managing access to prevent starvation and ensure fair usage, minimizing switching overhead.
Parallelism Defined
- Parallelism is simply adding more resources to increase work speed.
- This could involve adding CPU cores, mirroring databases, or increasing memory.
Synergy of Concurrency and Parallelism
- Concurrency and parallelism work together.
- Adding more resources (parallelism) without efficient sharing mechanisms (concurrency) might not improve performance.