[boost] Re: Multi threading etc (again)

From: Greg Colvin (gcolvin_at_[hidden])
Date: 1999-07-27 10:39:19

From: Paul Baxter <paje_at_[hidden]>
>
> Has anyone got any comments/critiques of the multi-processing initiative at
> www.openmp.org
> 
> They look to be specifying a common cross-platform interface to the need for
> parallelisation/threads etc.
> 
> Looks like some major companies supporting the initiative.
> 
> May be this might be something we can build on?

I just gave it a quick skim, and what I find is mainly a set of
pragmas that extend C/C++ with parallel programming constructs.
It looks to be very well done, but it is of no use unless you
have a compiler that recognizes the pragmas.  The advantage of
course is that such a compiler can generate better parallel code
than you get from a library-based approach to multithreading
like pthreads.

To change the topic slightly -- for shared_ptr I don't think we
need a full threading library, we just need a way, on any given
computer, to atomically decrement-and-test the counter variable.
Given that, it doesn't matter how threads are done.