Professional Parallel Programming with C#: Master Parallel Extensions With .NET 4

Chapter 1. Task-Based Programming

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Working with shared-memory multicore

• Understanding the differences between shared-memory multicore and distributed-memory systems

• Working with parallel programming and multicore programming in shared-memory architectures

• Understanding hardware threads and software threads

• Understanding Amdahl's Law

• Considering Gustafson's Law

• Working with lightweight concurrency models

• Creating successful task-based designs

• Understanding the differences between interleaved concurrency, concurrency, and parallelism

• Parallelizing tasks and minimizing critical sections

• Understanding rules for parallel programming for multicore architectures

• Preparing for NUMA architectures

This chapter introduces the new task-based programming that allows you to introduce parallelism in applications. Parallelism is essential to exploit modern shared-memory multicore architectures. The chapter describes the new lightweight concurrency models and important concepts related to concurrency and parallelisms. It includes the necessary background information in order to prepare your mind for the next 10 chapters.

WORKING WITH SHARED-MEMORY MULTICORE

In 2005, Herb Sutter published an article in Dr. Dobb's Journal titled "The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software" (www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm). He talked about the need to start developing software considering concurrency to fully exploit continuing exponential microprocessors throughput ...