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。

总结

并发(Concurrent):多件事情似乎同时发生(具有在并发任务之间快速切换的能力;它们是并发的，因为每个任务都想要一块资源，CPU等等。)

并行是指同时发生多件事情(执行线程的数量与执行内核的数量密切相关)

异步是简单的非阻塞，当我们必须等待的事情不会让我们忙于等待(需要某种通知机制从我们离开的地方继续)

每个人都很难将异步与并行或并发相关联，因为异步既不是并行的反义词，也不是并发的反义词。它是同步的反义词。它只是表示某些东西，在这个例子中是线程，是否会与其他东西同步，在这个例子中是另一个线程。

并发性可能发生在以下几种场景中:

异步——这意味着你的程序执行非阻塞操作。例如，它可以通过HTTP发起对远程资源的请求，然后在等待接收响应的同时继续执行一些其他任务。这有点像你发了一封电子邮件，然后继续你的生活，没有等待回复。

并行性——这意味着您的程序利用多核机器的硬件，通过将工作分解为任务，在同一时间执行任务，每个任务都在单独的核心上执行。这有点像洗澡时唱歌:你实际上是在同时做两件事。

多线程——这是一种允许不同线程并发执行的软件实现。多线程程序似乎同时在做几件事，即使它运行在单核机器上。这有点像通过各种IM窗口与不同的人聊天;虽然你实际上是在来回切换，但最终结果是你同时进行了多个对话。

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。

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