Parallel Patterns Library

The Parallel Patterns Library is a Microsoft library designed for use by native C++ developers that provides features for multicore programming.^[1] It was first bundled with Visual Studio 2010. It resembles the C++ Standard Library in style and works well with the C++11 language feature, lambdas, also introduced with Visual Studio 2010.

For example, this sequential loop:

  for (int x=0; x < width; ++x)
  {
     //Something parallelizable
  }

Can be made into a parallel loop by replacing the for with a parallel_for:

  #include <ppl.h>
  // . . .
 Concurrency::parallel_for (0, width, [=](int x)
 {
     //Something parallelizable
 });

This still requires the developer to know that the loop is parallelizable, but all the other work is done by the library.

MSDN^[2] describes the Parallel Patterns Library as an "imperative programming model that promotes scalability and ease-of-use for developing concurrent applications." It uses the Concurrency Runtime for scheduling and resource management and provides generic, type-safe algorithms and containers for use in parallel applications.

References

1. "The Visual C++ Weekly". March 12, 2011.
2. "Parallel Patterns Library (PPL) on MSDN".