I have a new 2 core CPU and I've been experimenting with boost::threads by attempting to keep both cores busy independent of each other.

Say I have a queue of 4 tasks to do. Each task will be handled by one thread. Some tasks will take longer to complete than others so I can't use thread_group with 2 threads at a time and join_all() as one core may finish before the other and set idle until the second thread completes. I use boost::thread::hardware_concurrency() to determine how many CPU cores I have available. My problem is *knowing* when a thread/CPU core finishes a task and is available for another task. Here is some sample code. I commented what I think would be an approach. Any suggestions or hints?


std::queue<std::string> string_queue()
{
    std::queue<std::string> sq;
   
    sq.push("AAA");
    sq.push("BBB");
    sq.push("CCC");
    sq.push("DDD");
   
    return sq;   
}


void worker(std::string& S)
{
    std::cout << S << std::endl;
}


int main()
{
    std::cout << "Number of Cores: " << boost::thread::hardware_concurrency() << std::endl;   
   
    std::queue<std::string> strings = string_queue();
   
    while ( !strings.empty() )
    {
        // if ( a CPU core is available )
        // {
            boost::thread t(boost::bind(&worker, strings.front()));
            t.join();
            strings.pop();
        // }
        // else
        // {
                  // wait awhile and check if a CPU core is available again.
        // }

    }
   
    return 0;
}

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