Re: [Boost-users] [thread] comparison with Intel Threading BuildingBlocks

From: Andrew Holden (aholden_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-07-25 11:06:17

Ovanes Markarian wrote:
> Thanks for you link, a very interesting one ;) I ment this 
> one in my previous post:
> http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2007/n2276.html

Another interesting technology.  I'll need to examine it more closely.
It looks similar to TBB.  Intel's implementation of TBB uses tasks and
thread pools.  Instead of futures, it uses canned parallel algorithms
that WILL complete before returning, thus freeing the user from worrying
that values might not be ready.

It looks like the futures run at a somewhat lower level than TBB, which
is certainly not a bad thing.  I can already see the beginnings of some
ideas where it might do things that TBB can't, like any situation where
you wish to launch a separate thread (or task) and forget about it.  I'm
also intrigued by the option of waiting an a specific return value from
the thread instead of joining the entire thread, like in boost.thread.

I find myself wordering if this would be a worthy addition to
boost.thread.  It looks like you could use a boost.thread condition
object in the implementation of a future.