Multi-threading API aims to ease portability
According to Urs Gleim, program manager for Parallel Processing Systems at Siemens AG and chair of the MTAPI Working Group, the majority of APIs currently targeting multicore devices are proprietary and as such do not promote portability of application code between platforms.
One of the goals of the MTAPI Working Group is to produce a specification that will enable greater code reuse between hardware platforms. At the moment, some tools support pThreads, but little else. It is hoped that MTAPI will be adopted by tools vendors, as well as being implemented in operating systems and kernels, to enable greater portability of code.
One of the Group’s ambitions is to better support heterogeneous SoCs; where multiple but different cores are implemented, such as graphics accelerators and DSPs sitting alongside general purpose processors. Here, managing the parallelisation of tasks becomes increasingly difficult and it is hoped that a standardised API resident on each core will make it simpler to fully utilise the resources of each core.
The Working Group is aiming to finalise the scope of MTAPI by November 2011, with the first draft of the specification being circulated in February 2012. The full specification is expected to be released in November 2012 and the Multicore Association is currently welcoming new members to join the Working Group in order to help direct the specification.
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