用类比来解释这些术语。

你的房子需要洗碗和洗衣服。

并发性:你不需要等完成一个任务后再启动另一个。例如，你可以先洗碗，也可以同时洗碗。他们可以按照任何顺序完成，也就是说，即使你先洗碗，也可能会先洗衣服。

平行性:你的房子里有不止一个人在做这件事;例如，你可以洗碗，而另一个人可以洗衣服。

异步:你让别人去洗衣服，你让别人去洗碗。他们实际上可以是同一个人(也就是说，你告诉他们去洗衣服，同时也告诉他们去洗碗)。他们处理完每个人后会向你报告。

同步:你叫别人去洗碗。你等着他们。当他们完成后，你可以做其他的事情(你可以告诉他们接下来洗衣服，或者你自己洗，或者你可以完全做其他的事情;重点是你在完成第一个任务时被阻塞，你与他们是同步的)。

我会让它简短而有趣，让你们能够理解这些概念。

并发与并行——任务执行的方式。

Take an example in real life: There’s a challenge that requires you to both eat a whole huge cake and sing a whole song. You’ll win if you’re the fastest who sings the whole song and finishes the cake. So the rule is that you sing and eat concurrently. How you do that does not belong to the rule. You can eat the whole cake, then sing the whole song, or you can eat half a cake, then sing half a song, then do that again, etc. Parallelism is a specific kind of concurrency where tasks are really executed simultaneously. In computer science, parallelism can only be achieved in multicore environments.

同步与异步——编程模型。

在同步中，您将代码编写为按顺序从上到下执行的步骤 底部。在异步编程模型中，你将代码作为任务编写， 然后并发执行。并发执行意味着 所有的任务都可能同时执行。

Concurrency Concurrency means that an application is making progress on more than one task at the same time (concurrently). Well, if the computer only has one CPU the application may not make progress on more than one task at exactly the same time, but more than one task is being processed at a time inside the application. It does not completely finish one task before it begins the next. Parallelism Parallelism means that an application splits its tasks up into smaller subtasks which can be processed in parallel, for instance on multiple CPUs at the exact same time. Concurrency vs. Parallelism In Detail As you can see, concurrency is related to how an application handles multiple tasks it works on. An application may process one task at at time (sequentially) or work on multiple tasks at the same time (concurrently). Parallelism on the other hand, is related to how an application handles each individual task. An application may process the task serially from start to end, or split the task up into subtasks which can be completed in parallel. As you can see, an application can be concurrent, but not parallel. This means that it processes more than one task at the same time, but the tasks are not broken down into subtasks. An application can also be parallel but not concurrent. This means that the application only works on one task at a time, and this task is broken down into subtasks which can be processed in parallel. Additionally, an application can be neither concurrent nor parallel. This means that it works on only one task at a time, and the task is never broken down into subtasks for parallel execution. Finally, an application can also be both concurrent and parallel, in that it both works on multiple tasks at the same time, and also breaks each task down into subtasks for parallel execution. However, some of the benefits of concurrency and parallelism may be lost in this scenario, as the CPUs in the computer are already kept reasonably busy with either concurrency or parallelism alone. Combining it may lead to only a small performance gain or even performance loss. Make sure you analyze and measure before you adopt a concurrent parallel model blindly.

从http://tutorials.jenkov.com/java-concurrency/concurrency-vs-parallelism.html

Parallel : It's a broad term that means that two pieces of code execute that "at the same time". It doesn't matter if it's "real" parallelism or if it's faked through some clever design pattern. The point is that you can start the "tasks" at the same time and then control them separately (with mutex and all the appropriate tricks). But usually you prefer to use the word "parallel" only for "true" parallelism, as in : you make it happen through non-cooperative multitasking (whether be throuch CPU/GPU cores, or only at software level by letting the OS managing it at a very low level). People are reluctant to say "parallel" just for complicated sequential code that fakes parallelism, like you would find in a browser window's javascript for example. Hence the reason why people in this thread say "asynchronous has nothing to do with parallelism". Well it does, but just don't confuse them.

并发:没有并行性就不可能有并发性(无论是模拟的还是真实的，正如我上面解释的那样)，但是这个术语特别关注的是两个系统将试图在某个时间点同时访问同一资源的事实。它强调了一个事实，那就是你必须要处理这个问题。

异步:每个人都说异步与并行无关，这是对的，但它为并行铺平了道路(让事情并行或不并行的负担在你身上——继续阅读)。

“异步”指的是并行性的一种表示形式，它形式化了并行性中通常涉及的三个基本内容:1)定义任务的初始化(比如它何时开始以及它获得哪些参数)，2)任务完成后必须做什么，3)代码在此期间应该继续做什么。

但它仍然只是语法(通常表示为回调方法)。在后台，底层系统可能简单地认为这些所谓的“任务”只是堆积起来的代码片段，直到它完成当前正在执行的代码。然后它一个接一个地把它们拆开，然后依次执行。与否。它还可以为每个任务创建一个线程，并并行运行它们。谁在乎呢?这部分不包括在概念中;)

并发和并行实际上是相同的原理，两者都与同时执行的任务有关，尽管我想说并行任务应该是真正的多任务，“同时”执行，而并发可能意味着任务共享执行线程，同时仍然看起来是并行执行。

异步方法与前两个概念没有直接关系，异步被用来呈现并发或并行任务的印象，但实际上异步方法调用通常用于需要在当前应用程序之外执行工作的进程，我们不希望等待和阻塞应用程序等待响应。

例如，从数据库获取数据可能需要时间，但我们不想阻塞UI等待数据。异步调用接受回调引用，并在请求被放置到远程系统后立即将执行返回给您的代码。当远程系统执行所需的任何处理时，UI可以继续响应用户，一旦它将数据返回给回调方法，那么该方法就可以适当地更新UI(或移交更新)。

从用户的角度来看，它看起来像多任务处理，但它可能不是。

EDIT

可能值得补充的是，在许多实现中，异步方法调用会导致线程启动，但这不是必要的，这实际上取决于正在执行的操作以及如何将响应通知回系统。

并发性意味着同时执行多个任务，但不一定是同时执行。当你必须执行多个任务，但你只有一个资源时，我们就会追求并发性。在单核环境中，并发是通过上下文切换实现的。

并行性就像同时执行多个任务，就像你可以一边唱歌一边洗澡。现在你在并行地做这些任务。

术语异步与线程执行有关。在异步模型中，当执行一个任务时，您可以切换到另一个任务，而无需等待前一个任务完成。

异步编程帮助我们实现并发性。多线程环境中的异步编程是实现并行的一种方法。