Parallelism and Concurrency Terminology

Question

I am currently taking a couple of classes involving these concepts and in some circumstances, the terms 'concurrency' and 'parallelism' seem to be used interchangeably and in some circumstances there seems to be a difference. Are these terms synonymous? If not, what are the definitions of concurrency and parallelism and how are the concepts similar/different?

Sajith Silva · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-11 17:29:33Z

1

yes there is a difference.

Parallelism: Ability to execute tasks in parallel

Concurrency can be done with even single processing unit using time sharing. This will give you the illusion of things performed in parallel but they are not.

http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Parallelism_vs._Concurrency

answered Apr 11, 2013 at 17:29

Sajith Silva

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Andriy Tylychko Over a year ago

+1: interesting definition, never seen it before, isn't it local to Haskell community?

harishbisht29 · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-01 09:37:08Z

0

Concurrency is about dealing with lots of things at once. Parallelism is about doing lots of things at once. Concurrency is searching the independent section in your code. While Parallelism is about executing those sections.

answered Apr 1, 2015 at 9:37

harishbisht29

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