The Parallel Patterns Library is a Microsoft library designed for use by native C++ developers that provides features for multicore programming.[1] It was first bundled with Visual Studio 2010. It resembles the C++ Standard Library in style and works well with the C++11 language feature, lambdas, also introduced with Visual Studio 2010.
For example, this sequential loop:
for (int x=0; x < width; ++x)
Can be made into a parallel loop by replacing the for with a parallel_for:
#include
This still requires the developer to know that the loop is parallelizable, but all the other work is done by the library.
MSDN[2] describes the Parallel Patterns Library as an "imperative programming model that promotes scalability and ease-of-use for developing concurrent applications." It uses the Concurrency Runtime for scheduling and resource management and provides generic, type-safe algorithms and containers for use in parallel applications.