OpenMP: Threaded Programming for Mortals

CS 441 Lecture, Dr. Lawlor

There's a newish language extension out there called OpenMP, designed to make it easier to write multithreaded code.

Here's how you enable OpenMP in various compilers. Visual C++ 2005, Intel C++ version 9.0, and gcc version 4.2 all support OpenMP, although earlier versions do not!

Here's the idiomatic OpenMP program: slap "#pragma parallel for" in front of your main loop. You're done!

Here's a more complex "who am I"-style OpenMP program from Lawrence Livermore National Labs. Note the compiler "#pragma" statements!

On the powerwall, you can compile and run OpenMP code as follows:
g++ get_info.c -o get_info -fopenmp
./get_info

Chris Granade has a nice page on OpenMP on the Cell Broadband Engine.