Parallel Computing for Data Science

5.12. LOCKFREE SYNCHRONIZATION 155

• Due to work stealing (Section 5.3.2), and possibly better cache be-

havior, TBB code in some cases yields better performance.

• TBB does not require special compiler capability, in contrast say to

OpenMP, which requires that the compiler understand OpenMP prag-

mas.

• TBB provides greater flexibility than OpenMP, though at the expense

of considerably greater complexity.

Concerning this last bullet item, TBB requires one to make use of C++

functors, which are function objects taking the form of a struct or class.

We will use these in the Thrust context in Chapter 7, but functors are just

the beginning of the added complexity ...