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Parallel Programming with Microsoft Visual C++

This week we have some more material available for “Parallel Programming with Microsoft Visual C++”. The latest drop on CodePlex includes another new chapter and an appendix:

Chapter 3 – Parallel Tasks

Chapter 2 shows how you can use a parallel loop to apply a single operation to many data elements. This is data parallelism. Chapter 3 explains what happens when there are distinct asynchronous operations that can run simultaneously. In this situation, you can temporarily fork a program’s flow of control with tasks that can potentially execute in parallel. This is task parallelism. The Parallel Tasks pattern is sometimes known as the Fork/Join pattern or the Master/Worker pattern.

Appendix C – Technology Overview

Appendix C describes some of the parallel computing resources offered by Microsoft® that are not covered in this book. The "Further Reading" section includes URLs for websites that have more information. Figure 1 illustrates the different offerings and how they are related.

The PDF on CodePlex also includes the latest versions of the Preface, Introduction and Chapters 2, 3, 6 & 7 with modifications based on reviewer feedback.

In addition to the new text we’ve also published the samples to all the chapters. Each chapter contains basic samples of using the Parallel Pattern Library or Asynchronous Agents Library as well as a complete example that shows a more real world application and demonstrates both a sequential and parallel solutions.

We would really like feedback on both the text and the samples. Please download them from CodePlex and post your feedback or questions there.