ParaWeaver: Performance Evaluation on Programming Models for Fine Grained Threads

There is a trend towards multicore or manycore processors in computer architecture design. In addition, several parallel programming models have been introduced. Some extract concurrent threads implicitly whenever possible, resulting in fine grained threads. Others construct threads by explicit user specifications in the program, resulting in coarse grained threads. How these two mechanisms impact performance remains an open question. Implicitly constructed fine grained threads exhibit more overhead due to additional thread scheduling, thread communication, and thread context switches. However, they also increase the flexibility in scheduling.