Easy Parallel Programming: Cilk Plus Ported To GCC

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Easy Parallel Programming: Cilk Plus Ported To GCC

Early this morning I mentioned some of the features for GCC 4.7 as what one can expect when this next major open-source compiler update is out in a matter of months. There was some speculation in the forums that this article was a preemptive article coming just before a big code drop. As luck would have it, this afternoon there's a big Intel GCC announcement...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTc5NQ

[dimko]

So...

First of all, will it work with AMD processors?(I'd be amazed if it does, why support competition?)
Second of all, did I understand it correct, it's transparent to compilator user? Will it transparently auto-magically compile programs to take advantage of multiprocessor CPU's?(I understand not too many "core" utilities can take advantage of it)

Thanks!

[Drago]

So...

First of all, will it work with AMD processors?(I'd be amazed if it does, why support competition?)
Second of all, did I understand it correct, it's transparent to compilator user? Will it transparently auto-magically compile programs to take advantage of multiprocessor CPU's?(I understand not too many "core" utilities can take advantage of it)

Thanks!

First: AMD and intel processors are x86, so it work on AMD. You as a programmer are concerned by the front-end, which doesn't depend on the CPU instructions back-end generates.
Second: No it won't auto-magically compile any program, because programs have to be written using Cilk. Three additional keywords are used in C/C++.

[curaga]

So it duplicates openmp functionality?

[RealNC]

So it duplicates openmp functionality?

It's supposed to be much simpler to use than OpenMP though. I'm looking forward to it; hopefully we'll see it in GCC soon.

[FireBurn]

I was actually expecting it to be a code drop from AMD as you said you had an AMD announcement this week on twitter

[sturmflut]

It's supposed to be much simpler to use than OpenMP though. I'm looking forward to it; hopefully we'll see it in GCC soon.

Looking at http://myxman.org/dp/node/182, I don't really get where Cilk Plus is "much simpler" than OpenMP. And Cilk Plus comes with quite some problems, ranging from being a non-standard language extension instead of just preprocessor magic (one can simply compile OpenMP code with a non-OpenMP-enabled compiler and it still works!) to just being supported by Intel. And you can't debug Cilk Plus using any standard debugger.

With OpenMP and Boost.Thread at hand, I don't really see a need for Cilk Plus.

[RealNC]

Looking at http://myxman.org/dp/node/182, I don't really get where Cilk Plus is "much simpler" than OpenMP.

It supposedly only has three keywords or something. I never worked with it either, mind you. :-P I use good old threads and MPI.

[curaga]

I've only used openmp of the two, and cilk doesn't look much simpler.