Parallel Programming with C++

Welcome to a short course that will teach you how to write modern C++ programs that can take advantage of the processing power of multicore processors. While this course is based on C++, the core ideas of functional programming and parallel functional programming are applicable to a wide range of languages. Indeed, this course is very similar to my Parallel Programming in Python course.

To follow this course you should already have a good basic understanding of C++, e.g. loops, functions, containers and classes. In addition, this course will use modern C++ (C++ 2014). Where a new C++ feature is used, it will be explained.

This is a short course that will give you a taste of functional programming and how it can be used to write efficient parallel code. Please work through the course at your own pace. Programming is best learned by using it, so please copy out and play with the examples provided, and also have a go at the exercises.

NOTE - this course will assume that you are compiling using the g++ command, via gcc version 5 or above, or clang version 7.3 or above. This is available for Windows (e.g. via MSYS2), Linux or OS X. The course will also assume that you are comfortable using the command line, and a text editor, such as nano or vim. Part 1 will use only standard C++ 2014. For Part 2, you will need to install Intel’s Threading Building Blocks, which are open source and available for Windows, Linux or OS X.


To start, you will need to download all of the course material. This is available by clicking here. This will download a file called workshop.tgz. Unpack this file using the command

tar -zxvf workshop.tgz

(if you are on windows, type this into an MSYS2 command shell)

This will unpack a directory called workshop. Change into this directory by typing

cd workshop

Typing ls should show you the following files;

include     shakespeare test.cpp

You can test that your compiler and tbb libraries are installed and working by typing

g++ -O3 --std=c++14 test.cpp -Iinclude -ltbb -o test
./test

If this works, you should see output

Everything is ok :-)

If not, then something went wrong. Double-check your installation of TBB and GCC 6.X.



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