How to optimize for dual, quad and higher multi-processors?

• My answer on "Are you concerned about multicores"
• Herb Sutter's articles
• Video Series on Parallel Programming

This book taught me a lot about these sorts of issues about why raw CPU power is not necessary the only thing to pay attention to. I used it in grad school years ago, but I think all of the principles still apply:

http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Approach-4th/dp/0123704901

And essentially a major issue in multi-process configurations is synchronizing the access to the main memory, if you don't do this right it can be a real bottleneck in the performance. It's pretty complex with the caches that have to be kept in sync.

my own question, with answer, on stackoverflow's sister site: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/126986/where-can-i-find-an-overview-of-known-multithreading-design-patterns/126993#126993

I will copy the answer to avoid the need for click-through:

Quote Boris:

Parallel Programming with Microsoft .NET: Design Patterns for Decomposition and Coordination on Multicore Architectures https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735651590

This is a book, I recommend wholeheartedly.

It is:

New - published last year. Means you are not reading somewhat outdated practices.

Short - about 200+ pages, dense with information. These days there is too much to read and too little time to read 1000+ pages books.

Easy to read - not only it is very well written but it introduces hard to grasps concepts in really simple to read way.

Intended to teach - each chapter gives exercises to do. I know it is always beneficial to do these, but rarely do. This book gives very compelling and interesting tasks. Surprisingly I did most of them and enjoyed doing them.

additionally, if you wish to learn more of the low-level details, this is the best resource i have found: "The Art of Multiprocessor Programming" It's written using java as their code samples, which plays nicely with my C# background.

PS: I have about 5 years "hard core" parallel programming experience, (abet using C#) so hope you can trust me when I say that "The Art of Multiprocessor Programming" rocks