Parallel Patterns Library

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The Parallel Patterns Library is a Microsoft library designed for use by native C++ developers that provides features for multicore programming. [1] It was first bundled with Visual Studio 2010. It resembles the C++ Standard Library in style and works well with the C++11 language feature, lambdas, also introduced with Visual Studio 2010.

For example, this sequential loop:

  for (int x=0; x < width; ++x)   {      //Something parallelizable   }

Can be made into a parallel loop by replacing the for with a parallel_for:

  #include <ppl.h>   // . . .  Concurrency::parallel_for (0, width, [=](int x)  {      //Something parallelizable  });

This still requires the developer to know that the loop is parallelizable, but all the other work is done by the library.

MSDN [2] describes the Parallel Patterns Library as an "imperative programming model that promotes scalability and ease-of-use for developing concurrent applications." It uses the Concurrency Runtime for scheduling and resource management and provides generic, type-safe algorithms and containers for use in parallel applications.

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References

  1. ↑ "The Visual C++ Weekly". March 12, 2011. Archived from the original on October 8, 2011. Retrieved August 14, 2011.
  2. ↑ "Parallel Patterns Library (PPL) on MSDN". 3 August 2021.
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