Christoph W. Kessler and Helmut Seidl. Language Support for Synchronous Parallel Critical Sections. Advances in Parallel and Distributed Computing Conference, pages 92-99, Shanghai, China, March 1997. IEEE Computer Society.

We introduce a new parallel programming paradigm, namely synchronous parallel critical sections. Such parallel critical sections must be seen in the context of switching between synchronous and asynchronous modes of computation. Thread farming allows to generate bunches of threads to solve independent subproblems asynchronously and in parallel. Opposed to that, synchronous parallel critical sections allow to organize bunches of asynchronous parallel threads to execute certain tasks jointly and synchronously. We show how the PRAM language Fork95 can be extended by a construct "join" supporting parallel critical sections. We explain its semantics and implementation, and discuss possible applications.

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