2.8 Further Reading

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2.8 Further Reading

Because the idea of a program context is central to how asynchronous activities (threads, processes, etc.) are implemented on a computer, a good understanding of them is important in understanding the behavior of concurrent activities. The material in this chapter tries to give a basic understanding of these concepts. A more complete explanation of how program stacks are used and what is contained in them can be found in most books on programming languages, such as Concepts of Programming Languages by Sebesta [SEB99]. A more complete explanation of program contexts and how they are used is found in most books on operating systems, such as Operating Systems, fourth edition, by Stallings [STA01]. Finally, a detailed explanation of a simple computer architecture, one that can be used to understand how a subroutine call is executed, can be found in Computer System Architecture by Mano [MAN93]. For a more in-depth presentation of how stacks and threads are implemented specifically in the JVM, see The Java Virtual Machine Specification, second edition, by Lindehold and Yellin [LIN99], or Java Threads, by Oaks and Wong [OAK97], both of which give good details on the internals for Java.

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