Threading Building Blocks 2.1

It enquires fewer lines of code to achieve parallelism than other threading models. The TBB library is also inherently scalable and no code maintenance is required as more processor cores become available.

Threading Building Blocks (TBB) is an award-winning C++ runtime library that abstracts the low-level threading details necessary for optimal multi-core performance. It uses common C++ templates and coding style to eliminate tedious threading implementation work.

TBB requires fewer lines of code to achieve parallelism than other threading models. The applications you write are portable across platforms. Since the library is also inherently scalable, no code maintenance is required as more processor cores become available.

Major Features:

1. Ready to use parallel algorithms: Select from a library of highly-efficient parallel algorithm templates, and rapidly obtain the advantages of multi-core Intel processors.
   • Quickly employ commonly needed algorithms designed for parallel performance and scalability.
   • Generic templates let you easily tailor these algorithms to your needs.
   • Supports easy plug-in deployment into applications to deliver scalable software speed-up, optimizing for both available cores and cache locality.
   • Reduce the work required to produce threaded software in many cases, by means of pre-built parallel constructs.
2. Cross platform support: Write applications once and deploy on multiple OS's.
   • Provides a single solution for Windows*, Linux*, and Mac OS* X on 32-bit and 64-bit platforms using Intel®, Microsoft, and GNU compilers.
   • Supports industry-leading compilers from Intel, Microsoft and GNU.
   • Speeds deployment of applications on multiple multi-core platforms.
3. Task based parallelism: Specify threading functionality in terms of logical tasks instead of physical threads.
   • Lets developer focus on higher level of scalable task patterns instead of low-level thread mechanics
   • Uses proven data-decomposition abstractions that efficiently use multiple cores
   • Enables automatic load balancing
   • Efficiently supports nested parallelism, allowing parallel components to be built from other parallel components
4. Library based solution: Get highly optimized parallel functionality now with minimal effort.
   • Your C++ application simply calls the Threading Building Blocks library
   • Standard C++ - no need to rewrite code in a new language
   • Compatible with other threading packages
   • Allows unlimited distribution of the runtime libraries with your software
   • Seamlessly integrates into existing development environments
5. Highly concurrent containers: Optimize the processor's ability to perform simultaneous tasks.
   • Simplify multithreaded application development with interfaces designed for thread-safety and high concurrency.
   • Improve application quality by employing pre-tested data structures.
   • Improve application performance by enabling multiple execution cores or processors to work together more efficiently.
6. Automatic grainsize calculation: TBB can automatically calculate grainsize to control the granularity of a task in order to get good performance on multi-core processors.
   

Enhancements:

• Exported symbols now explicitly controlled with version scripts on Linux
• Interfaces polished for exception handling & algorithm cancellation
• Cache behavior improvements in the scalable allocator
• Improvements in text_filter, polygon_overlay, and other examples
• A lot of other stability improvements in code, tests, and makefiles
• Bug fix for boost compatibility.
• Bug fix for tbb_machine.h.

Requirements:

• Minimum Requirements
  
  • Intel® Pentium® 4 processor or Intel® Itanium® 2 processor
  • 300 MB of disk space
• Recommended:
  
• • Intel Pentium 4 processor supporting Hyper-Threading Technology1 (HT Technology)
  • Intel® Xeon® processor
    
  •  Intel Itanium 2 processor