- What is Concurrency?
- The Benefits of Parallel Programming
- The Benefits of Distributed Programming
- The Minimal Effort Required
- The Basic Layers of Software Concurrency
- No Keyword Support for Parallelism in C++
- Programming Environments for Parallel and Distributed Programming
- Summary·Toward Concurrency
Summary—Toward Concurrency
Throughout this book we present an architectural approach to parallel and distributed programming. The emphasis is placed on uncovering the natural parallelism within a problem and its solution. This parallelism is captured within the software model for the solution. We suggest object-oriented methods to help manage the complexity of parallel and distributed programming. Our mantra is function follows form. We use the library approach to provide parallelism support for the C++ language. The libraries we recommend are based on national and international standards. Each library is freely available and widely used. Techniques and concepts presented in the book are vendor independent, nonproprietary, and rely on open standards and open architectures. The C++ programmer and software developer can use different parallel models to serve different needs because each parallelism model is captured within a library. The library approach to parallel and distributed programming gives the C++ programmer the greatest possible flexibility. While parallel and distributed programming can be fun and rewarding, it presents several challenges. In the next chapter we will provide an overview of the most common challenges to parallel and distributed programming.