Handling exceptions in programs with hidden concurrency: new challenges for old solutions

Abstract

Multi-core processors are present in everyone's daily life. Consequently, concurrent programming has reemerged as a pressing concern for everyone interested in exploring all the potential computational power in these machines. But, the emergence of new concurrency models and programming languages also brings new challenges in terms of how one can deal with abnormal occurrences, much due to the heterogenous parallel control flow. Unexpectedly, sequential Exception Handling models remain as the most used tool for robustness, even in the most recent concurrent programming languages. Though, the appearance of more complex models, such as programming languages with implicit concurrency, might pose a challenge too big for these sequential mechanisms. In this article we will provide evidences why such models are not generally suited to deal with faults in programs with implicit concurrency and, in the light of more recent advances in concurrent Exception Handling, we will discuss the attributes of a model for addressing this problem.