Towards High-Level Parallel Programming Models for Multicore Systems

Parallel programming represents the next turning point in how software engineers write software. Multicore processors can be found today in the heart of supercomputers, desktop computers and laptops. Consequently, applications will increasingly need to be parallelized to fully exploit multicore processors throughput gains now becoming available. Unfortunately, writing parallel code is more complex than writing serial code. This is where the threading building blocks (TBB) approach enters the parallel computing picture. TBB helps developers create multithreaded applications more easily by using high-level abstractions to hide much of the complexity of parallel programming, We study the programmability and performance of TBB by evaluating several practical applications. The results show very promising performance but parallel programming with TBB is still tedious and error-prone.