Multithreaded Algorithms[1]

1.Although the functionality of dynamic-multithreading environments is still evolving, almost all support two features: nested parallelism and parallel loops. Nested parallelism allows a subroutine to be “spawned,” allowing the caller to proceed while the spawned subroutine is computing its result. A parallel loop is like an ordinary for loop, except that the iterations of the loop can execute concurrently.

2.The actual running time of a multithreaded computation depends not only on its work and its span, but also on how many processors are available and how the scheduler allocates strands to processors.The work of a multithreaded computation is the total time to execute the entire computation on one processor. In other words, the work is the sum of the times taken by each of the strands. For a computation dag in which each strand takes unit time, the work is just the number of vertices in the dag. The span is the longest time to execute the strands along any path in the dag.Again, for a dag in which each strand takes unit time, the span equals the number of vertices on a longest or critical path in the dag.