Shared Memory Application Programming

Shared Memory Application Programming presents the key concepts and applications of parallel programming, in an accessible and engaging style applicable to developers across many domains. Multithreaded programming is today a core technology, at the basis of all software development projects in any branch of applied computer science. This book guides readers to develop insights about threaded programming and introduces two popular platforms for multicore development: OpenMP and Intel Threading Building Blocks (TBB). Author Victor Alessandrini leverages his rich experience to explain each platform’s design strategies, analyzing the focus and strengths underlying their often complementary capabilities, as well as their interoperability. The book is divided into two parts: the first develops the essential concepts of thread management and synchronization, discussing the way they are implemented in native multithreading libraries (Windows threads, Pthreads) as well as in the modern C++11 threads standard. The second provides an in-depth discussion of TBB and OpenMP including the latest features in OpenMP 4.0 extensions to ensure readers’ skills are fully up to date. Focus progressively shifts from traditional thread parallelism to modern task parallelism deployed by modern programming environments. Several chapter include examples drawn from a variety of disciplines, including molecular dynamics and image processing, with full source code and a software library incorporating a number of utilities that readers can adapt into their own projects.