A C++ Generic Parallel Pattern Interface for Stream Processing

Abstract

Current parallel programming frameworks aid to a great extent developers to implement applications in order to exploit parallel hardware resources. Nevertheless, developers require additional expertise to properly use and tune them to operate on specific parallel platforms. On the other hand, porting applications between different parallel programming models and platforms is not straightforward and requires, in most of the cases, considerable efforts. Apart from that, the lack of high-level parallel pattern abstractions in these frameworks increases even more the complexity for developing parallel applications. To pave the way in this direction, this paper proposes GrPPI, a generic and reusable high-level parallel pattern interface for stream-based C++ applications. Thanks to its high-level C++ API, this interface allows users to easily expose parallelism in sequential applications using already existing parallel frameworks, such as C++ threads, OpenMP and Intel TBB. We evaluate this approach using an image processing use case to demonstrate its benefits from the usability, flexibility, and performance points of view.