Ludovic Brenta

Ada is one of very few programming languages that support multithreading as part of the language, as opposed to libraries.

In the previous two episodes, we showed how Ada makes it easy to turn a single-threaded program into a multi-threaded program. We ended up with ten thousand threads working concurrently then introduced a task pool and work queue wherein a small number of threads (one per processor core) process thousands of small work units. But the work queue could become very big. In this third and last episode, we show how to restrict the size of the work queue to a fixed limit, thereby preventing denial-of-service attacks.

This presentation will feature live editing of source code, compilation and debugging. Questions from beginners are encouraged. It is not necessary to have attended the first installments. The sources of our example program will be provided to those who want to tinker with them.

A short update on the current state of Ada in Debian and the plans for the next stable release which is due early 2015.

Ada is one of very few programming languages that support multi-threading as part of the language, as opposed to libraries.

Last year, we showed how Ada makes it easy to turn a single-threaded program into a multi-threaded program. We ended up with ten thousand threads working concurrently. I will briefly recap this first episode and then continue with the same program, introducing a task pool wherein a small number of threads (one per processor core) process thousands of small work units.

This presentation will feature live editing of source code, compilation, and debugging. Questions from beginners are encouraged. It is not necessary to have attended the first installment. The sources of our example program will be provided to those who want to tinker with them.

Ada is one of very few programming languages that support multithreading as part of the language, as opposed to libraries.

As a consequence, the multithreading facilities use simple, high-level abstractions: tasks and protected objects, rather than low-level library calls. Ada allows beginners and younger programmers to write multithreading programs. If you come prepared with an Ada compiler on your laptop, you can learn by doing in this interactive, hands-on session, and unleash the full power of your multicore processor!