Multicore Application Programming: For Windows, Linux, and Oracle® Solaris

3. Identifying Opportunities for Parallelism

This chapter discusses parallelism, from the use of virtualization to support multiple operating systems to the use of multiple threads within a single application. It also covers the concepts involved in writing parallel programs, some ways of visualizing parallel tasks, and ways of architecting parallel applications. The chapter continues with a discussion of various parallelization strategies, or patterns. It concludes by examining some of the limitations to parallelization. By the end of the chapter, you should be in a position to understand some of the ways that a system can support multiple applications and that an existing application might be modified to utilize multiple threads. You will ...