Recording some good links

http://www.ddj.com/go-parallel/

http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7407/1.html

Cilk++

With the advent of 16, 24 (and also 32?) cored machines, multi-core machines are foraying in a big way. Most applications programmed aren't multi-core aware and hence though multi-core hardware prices aren't daunting, the applications can't really scale to it. Redesigning the legacy apps for multi-core aware is not a small task. However suites like Cilk++ do make it so.

Cilk++ comes with a complete suite of compiler, run time system et al, which enables legacy applications that have been designed with no scaling in sight to be multi-core aware with minimal changes. Believe it or not, your code requires as less change as using three keywords effectively to indicate parallelism and synchronization – cilk_for, clik_spawn (for areas which have recursive calls or the types to make use of the multi-cores), cilk_sync (gather results from all the calls). Cilk provides race detector and reducers (race free global variables) as well.

 

To know more, read this:

http://www.cilk.com/multicore-products/cilk-solution-overview/

On using the three keywords to indicate parallelism, the Cilk++ compiler compiles the serial code into multi-core enabled parallel application.

 

N-Queens Problem

A good starting point to understand how this can be used is the N-Queens problem: 

http://www.cilk.com/multicore-blog/bid/6381/Multicore-enabling-the-N-Queens-Problem-Using-Cilk. 

There are other problems discussed as well. You could track the cilk blog to know more.

 

And to know more about the Cilk language itself: 

http://supertech.csail.mit.edu/papers/cilk5.pdf