http://golang.

org
Thursday, July 22, 2010
 Go
Rob Pike
Emerging Languages
OSCON
July 21, 2010

http://golang.org
Thursday, July 22, 2010
 Concurrency
Where did Go's concurrency model come from?

It's got a long history.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Parallelism
In the late 1970s, multiprocessors were a research topic.

Programming multiprocessors seemed related to issues of

operating systems research, interrupt handling, I/O systems,
message passing, ...

Ideas in the air:

- semaphores (Dijkstra, 1965)
- monitors (Hoare, 1974)
- locks (mutexes)
- message passing

(Lauer & Needham 1979 showed that message-passing and

what we now call threads&locks are equivalent.)

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP)
Seminal paper by C.A.R. Hoare, CACM 1978.

A model programming language that promoted input, output as

fundamental elements of computing.

"Parallel composition of communicating sequential processes."

Communication is I/O.
Parallel composition is multiprocessing.
That's all you need!

More ideas in this paper than in any other 10 good papers you
are likely to find.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP)
Mathematical, concise, elegant.

Generalization of Dijkstra's guarded commands, with ! for

sending and ? for receiving a message.

p!value sends value to process p

p?var receives value from p, stores in variable var
[A;B] runs A followed by B
[A||B] runs A in parallel with B (composition)
*[A] runs A repeatedly
[a ! A [] b ! B] guarded command
(if a then A elif b then B fi, but in parallel)

Communication is synchronization.
Each command can succeed or fail.
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Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Coroutines
COPY:: *[c: character; west?c ! east!c]

DISASSEMBLE::
*[cardimage:(1..80)character; cardfile?cardimage !
i:integer; i := 1;
*[i≤80 ! X!cardimage(i); i := i+1]
X!space ]

ASSEMBLE:: lineimage(1..125)character;
i:integer; i := 1;
*[c:character; X?c !
lineimage(i) := c;
[ i≤24 ! i := 1+1
[] i=125 ! lineprinter!lineimage; i := 1
] ];
[ i=1 ! skip;
[] i>1 ! *[i≤125 ! lineimage(i) := space; i := i+1];
lineprinter!lineimage ]

[west::DISASSEMBLE||COPY||east::ASSEMBLE] # pipe!
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Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Ports and patterns
The "ports" used in communication are just single connections
to predefined processes - the names are process names.

Can write a prime sieve for 1000 primes but not N primes; a
matrix multiplier for 3x3 but not NxN, etc. (Arrays of
processes do the bookkeeping.)

Pattern matching to analyze/unpack messages:

[ c?(x, y) ! A ]

More general conditions:

[ i≥100; c?(x, y) ! A ]

Cannot use send as a guard.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Recap
Parallel composition of independent processes

Communication synchronizes

No sharing of memory

Not threads and Not mutexes!

Now we come to a fork in the road.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 The Occam branch
Distinct sets of languages emerge from CSP.
One leads us to Occam, very close to basic CSP.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Occam
Inmos, a hardware company, designed the Transputer, and
programmed it in Occam (1983).
Parallel architecture; nodes on the chip communicate with !?.
Ports correspond to hardware.
Language quite close to CSP (advised by Hoare).
ALT
count1 < 100 & c1 ? data
SEQ
count1 := count1 + 1
merged ! data
count2 < 100 & c2 ? data
SEQ
count2 := count2 + 1
merged ! data
status ? request
SEQ
out ! count1
10
out ! count2 -- (note white space for structure!)

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 The Erlang branch
Another leads us to Erlang: networked, pattern-matched.

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Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Erlang

Developed at Ericsson (late 1980s). Took the functional side of

CSP and used "mailboxes". Processes use pattern matching to
unpack messages. Send is to a process ID.

ServerProcess = spawn(web, start_server, [Port, MaxConnections]),

RemoteProcess = spawn(RemoteNode, web, start_server, [Port, MaxConnections]),

ServerProcess ! {pause, 10},

receive
a_message -> do_something;
{data, DataContent} -> handle(DataContent);
{hello, Text} -> io:format("Got hello message: ~s", [Text]);
{goodbye, Text} -> io:format("Got goodbye message: ~s", [Text])
end.

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Thursday, July 22, 2010

 The Newsqueak/Limbo/Go branch
Another branch leads us to eventually to Go.
Here the focus is on channels.

13

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Squeak
Squeak* (Cardelli and Pike (1985)) was a toy language used
to demonstrate the use of concurrency to manage the input
streams to a user interface.

proc Mouse = DN? . M?p . moveTo!p . UP? . Mouse

proc Kbd(s) = K?c .
if c==NewLine then typed!s . Kbd(emptyString)
else Kbd(append(s, c))
fi
proc Text(p) =
< moveTo?p . Text(p)
:: typed?s . {drawString(s, p)? . Text(p) >

type = Mouse & Kbd(emptyString) & Text(nullPt)

*unrelated to the much later Squeak Smalltalk implementation

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Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Newsqueak
Newsqueak (1989) looked syntactically like C but was
applicative and concurrent. Idea: a research language to
make the concurrency ideas of Squeak practical.
Had lambdas called progs, a select statement
corresponding to the CSP alternation, but guards must be
communication only (sends work).

Long-lived syntactic inventions:

Communication operator is left arrow <-. Information flows
in direction of arrow. Also <-c (receive) is an expression.
Introduces := for "declare and initialize":

x: int = 1
x := 1
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Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Prime sieve
counter := prog(c:chan of int) {
i:int; for(i = 2;;) c<-=i++;
};
filter := prog(prime:int, listen,send:chan of int) {
i:int; for(i=0 ;;) if((i=<-listen)%prime) send<-=i;
};
sieve := prog() of chan of int {
c := mk(chan of int);
begin counter(c);
prime := mk(chan of int);
begin prog(){
p: int;
newc: chan of int;
for(;;){
prime<- = p = <-c;
newc = mk();
begin filter(p, c, newc);
c = newc;
}
}();
become prime;
16
};
Thursday, July 22, 2010
 Channels as first-class values
Unlike in the other languages, Newsqueak had the concept
of channels as first-class values in a CSP-like model.

In Newsqueak and its descendants, can send a channel on a

channel.

c: chan of int;
cc: chan of chan of int;

cc<- = c; # Sends channel c on channel cc.

# Recipient can then use c.

Makes multiplexers easy to construct. I can send you the

channel to use to reply to me. It's a capability, like a file
descriptor: "I grant you permission to communicate with me."
(Erlang process IDs can grant ability to send but not receive;
17
Newsqueak channels are fully symmetric.)
Thursday, July 22, 2010
 Alef
Early 1990s: Alef (Phil Winterbottom) grafted the concurrency
and communications model of Newsqueak onto a more
traditional compiled C-like language.

Problem: with C's memory model in a concurrent world, hard

to know when to free items.

All the other languages in this talk are garbage-collected,

which is essential to easy concurrent programming.

18

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Limbo
Limbo (Dorward, Pike, Winterbottom 1996) was a VM
language (contemporaneous with Java) that was closer to
Newsqueak in overall design.

Used as an embedded language in communication products.

As in Newsqueak and Alef, the key idea is that channels are

first-class.

19

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Go
Go (Griesemer, Pike, Thompson 2009) is a compiled, object-
oriented language with a concurrent runtime.

Makes it easy to use the tools of CSP efficiently, in concert

with regular systems code. Channels are first class! (So are
functions, which can run in parallel.)

Compilation makes execution efficient (e.g., cryptographic

calculations are quick).

The runtime makes concurrency easy (stacks,

communication, scheduling, etc. are all automatic).

Garbage-collected, naturally.

Best of all worlds!

20

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 A card reassembly example in Go
func copy(west, east chan byte) { for { east <- <-west } }

func assemble(X chan byte, printer chan []byte) {

lineimage := make([]byte, 125)
for i := 0;; {
lineimage[i] = <-X
if i < 124 { i++ } else { printer <- lineimage; i = 0 }
}
}

func disassemble(cardfile chan []byte, X chan byte) {

for {
cardimage := <-cardfile
i := 0
for i < len(cardimage) { X <- cardimage[i]; i++ }
for i < 80 { X <- ' '; i++ }
}
}

go disassemble(cardreader, chars1)
go copy(chars1, chars2)
21
go assemble(chars2, lineprinter)
Thursday, July 22, 2010
 Summary
Go's concurrency structures have a long history dating back
to a branch in the CSP family tree in the 1980s. Multiple real
languages have built on CSP's ideas.

Channels as first-class values are the distinguishing feature

of the Go branch.

Go pulls together elements from several predecessors,

coupling high-level concurrency operations with a compiled
object-oriented language.

To use concurrency gracefully, language must have garbage

collection and automatic stack management.

22

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Go
There's much more to Go than concurrency!

Two more OSCON talks tomorrow about it.

In the meantime, see

http://golang.org

for lots more information.

23

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Read the 1978 CSP paper
It is deep and wise

24

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 Quotes from the CSP paper

[Processes] may not communicate with each other by

updating global variables.

In parallel programming coroutines appear as a more

fundamental program structure than subroutines, which can be
regarded as a special case.

[A coroutine] may use input commands to achieve the effect of

"multiple entry points" ... [and be] used like a SIMULA class
instance as a concrete representation for abstract data.

25

Thursday, July 22, 2010

 http://golang.org
Thursday, July 22, 2010
 Go
Rob Pike
Emerging Languages
OSCON
July 21, 2010

http://golang.org
Thursday, July 22, 2010