14 DAY TRIAL // Intel just announced the release of the development suite Threading Building Blocks 2.0 as both an open source application and as a commercial product. Threading Building Blocks 2.0 should allow application programmers to write threaded code in fewer lines and to achieve parallelism in an easier way than other threading models. Besides releasing Threading Building Blocks 2.0 as an open source application, Intel went further and launched a Web site proposing an open source project that uses this product as a starting point.
Threading Building Blocks 2.0, or TBB as will most certainly be known in the developer circles, is a C++ runtime library that allows a certain degree of low level abstraction when dealing with threads in a multi cored environment. To minimize or hopefully eliminate it, the programmers need to accommodate to a new coding style, the TBB version 2.0 uses common C++ templates and coding style. "We found people very hungry to program in C++, but multi-threading common tasks is not available in all platforms. Now it can be used by everyone," James Reinders, software evangelist and director of marketing for Intel's Software Development Products, told LinuxInsider and was later cited by the news site TechNewsWorld. "I'm not aware of any threading product available as open source until now."
Intel TBB helps software developers write thread centered programs in fewer lines of code in order to achieve parallelism, while maintaining portability across different hardware platforms and "Since the runtime library is also inherently scalable, no code maintenance is required as more processor cores become available" Reinders explained. He also added that by using TBB, programmers can abstract raw threading into a high-level representation world of tasks. As the Threading Building Blocks 2.0 is intended for developers, it supports all the major operating systems like Linux, Mac OS X, Power Mac G5, Windows, Solaris 10 (32/64 bits) and FreeBSD 6.2, along side most hardware architectures.
As open source applications and standards gain more ground, Intel decided to launch the TBB as an open source project in order to increase the rate of adoption among open developers, while continuing to offer a commercial version for a fee. As Intel's open source version of the Threading Building Blocks 2.0 is committed to compiler, processor and operating system independence, Reinders said that his company has many plans for TBB: "Intel is investing in this project and is adding engineers to it. We put a lot of energy into making this competitive. Intel hopes to keep more programmers comfortable using parallel programs".