Re: [boost] GSoC: Boost.Pipeline -- scheduling of segments

Subject: Re: [boost] GSoC: Boost.Pipeline -- scheduling of segments
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-07-08 07:03:41

On 7 Jul 2014 at 8:35, Sebastian Schaetz wrote:

> There is also Christophe Henry's Boost.Asynchronous. Just like the HPX guys
> he spent a lot of time thinking about this kind of problem and from what I
> understand, his solutions is reasonable. The interface is still a little
> rough around the edges but that can be changed. Advantage over HPX: it is a
> library already targeted at becoming part of Boost one day.

I agree with all of this assessment. I would add that I somewhat 
struggle to see how his "go it alone" approach fits snugly with what 
WG21 have already agreed is going to happen (his Preface in 
particular is stale) - I should worry his approach may become 
orphaned. Also, though he has taken time and care to have his 
approach fit somewhat with other Boost libraries present and future, 
I find the depth of that part somewhat lacking. None of this is 
insurmountable in a peer review of course. It looks to be a great 
library.

Vicente, if you're reading you really should have a look at proposed 
Boost.Asynchronous. He's already done a lot of your todo list for 
Boost.Thread.

> As for the original question, I think option one (dedicate a thread to each
> segment) is fine for now. Maybe it can be implemented with a pseudo task
> abstraction that can be exchanged with a real task abstraction (or whatever
> HPX or Boost.Asynchronous call it) once it is available. I would consider a
> fixed-size threadpool with not enough threads to run all segments a
> runtime-error (or compile-time if the threadpool allows for this) - for now.

My only qualm, really, is that proposed Boost.Asynchronous does not 
appear to me to implement pull-push pipeline management which is the 
hard part of a Pipelines implementation. I am under the possibly 
mistaken understanding that HPX does.

Niall

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