oneAPI Threading Building Blocks (oneTBB; formerly Threading Building Blocks or TBB), is a C++

template Template may refer to: Tools * Die (manufacturing), used to cut or shape material * Mold, in a molding process * Stencil, a pattern or overlay used in graphic arts (drawing, painting, etc.) and sewing to replicate letters, shapes or designs Co ...

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...

developed by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

for

parallel programming Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different f ...

multi-core processor A multi-core processor is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit with two or more separate processing units, called cores, each of which reads and executes program instructions. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions (suc ...

s. Using TBB, a computation is broken down into tasks that can run in parallel. The library manages and schedules

threads Thread may refer to: Objects * Thread (yarn), a kind of thin yarn used for sewing ** Thread (unit of measurement), a cotton yarn measure * Screw thread, a helical ridge on a cylindrical fastener Arts and entertainment * ''Thread'' (film), 2016 ...

to execute these tasks.

Overview

A oneTBB program creates, synchronizes, and destroys graphs of dependent tasks according to ''algorithms'', i.e. high-level parallel programming paradigms (a.k.a.

Algorithmic Skeletons In computing, algorithmic skeletons, or parallelism patterns, are a high-level parallel programming model for parallel and distributed computing. Algorithmic skeletons take advantage of common programming patterns to hide the complexity of paral ...

). Tasks are then executed respecting graph dependencies. This approach groups TBB in a family of techniques for parallel programming aiming to decouple the programming from the particulars of the underlying machine. oneTBB implements work stealing to balance a parallel workload across available processing cores in order to increase core utilization and therefore scaling. Initially, the workload is evenly divided among the available processor cores. If one core completes its work while other cores still have a significant amount of work in their queue, oneTBB reassigns some of the work from one of the busy cores to the idle core. This dynamic capability decouples the programmer from the machine, allowing applications written using the library to scale to utilize the available processing cores with no changes to the source code or the executable program file. In a 2008 assessment of the work stealing implementation in TBB, researchers from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

found that it was suboptimal for large numbers of processors cores, causing up to 47% of computing time spent in scheduling overhead when running certain benchmarks on a 32-core system. oneTBB, like the STL (and the part of the C++ standard library based on it), uses templates extensively. This has the advantage of low-overhead

polymorphism Polymorphism, polymorphic, polymorph, polymorphous, or polymorphy may refer to: Computing * Polymorphism (computer science), the ability in programming to present the same programming interface for differing underlying forms * Ad hoc polymorphis ...

, since templates are a compile-time construct which modern C++

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

s can largely optimize away. oneTBB is available commercially as a binary distribution with support,https://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-tbb Intel Threading Building Blocks Commercial Version Homepage and as

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Ope ...

in both source and binary forms. oneTBB does not provide guarantees of

determinism Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...

or freedom from data races.

Library contents

oneTBB is a collection of components for parallel programming: * Basic algorithms: parallel_for, parallel_reduce, parallel_scan * Advanced algorithms: parallel_pipeline, parallel_sort *

Container A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term ...

s: concurrent_queue, concurrent_priority_queue, concurrent_vector, concurrent_hash_map * Memory allocation: scalable_malloc, scalable_free, scalable_realloc, scalable_calloc, scalable_allocator, cache_aligned_allocator *

Mutual exclusion In computer science, mutual exclusion is a property of concurrency control, which is instituted for the purpose of preventing race conditions. It is the requirement that one thread of execution never enters a critical section while a concurrent ...

: mutex, spin_mutex, queuing_mutex, spin_rw_mutex, queuing_rw_mutex, recursive_mutex * Timing: portable fine grained global time stamp * Task scheduler: direct access to control the creation and activation of tasks

Systems supported

The hardware, operating system, and software prerequisites for oneTBB.

Supported Hardware

* Intel Celeron processor family * Intel Core processor family * Intel Xeon processor family * Intel Xeon Phi processor family * Intel Atom processor family * Non-Intel processors compatible with the processors above

Supported Operating Systems

Systems with Microsoft Windows operating systems: * Microsoft Windows 10 * Microsoft Windows Server 2016 * Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Systems with Linux* operating systems: * Clear Linux * Amazon Linux 2 * CentOS 8 * Debian 10 * Fedora 34 * Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, 8 * SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 * Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, 20.04, 21.04 Systems with macOS operating systems: * macOS 10.15, 11.x Systems with Android operating systems: * Android 9

Supported Compilers

* Intel oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler * Intel C++ Compiler 19.0 and 19.1 version * Microsoft Visual C++ 14.2 (Microsoft Visual Studio 2019, Windows OS only) * GNU Compilers (gcc) 4.8.5 - 11.1.1 * GNU C Library (glibc) version 2.17 - 2.33 * Clang 6.0.0-12.0.0

Notes

References

* * * * *

External links

oneTBB Industry Specification
* * at Intel {{Parallel Computing Concurrent programming libraries Application programming interfaces C++ programming language family Generic programming Threads (computing) C++ libraries Intel software