FastFlow is a multi-core programming framework implemented as a C++ template library that offers a set of mechanisms to support low-latency and high-bandwidth data flows in a network of threads running on a cache-coherent multi-core architectures. On these architectures, one of the key performance issues concern memory fences, which are required to keep the various caches coherent. FastFlow provides the programmer with two basic mechanisms:
- efficient point-to-pint communication channels;
- a memory allocator.
Communication channels, as typical is in streaming applications, are unidirectional and asynchronous. They are implemented via fence-free FIFO queues. The memory allocator is built on top of these queues, thus taking advantage of their efficiency. On top of these basic machnisms FastFlow provides a library of explicitly parallel constructs (a.k.a. skeletons) such as pipeline and farm. The farm skeleton, exploits functional replication and abstracts the parallel filtering of successive independent items of the stream under the control of a scheduler.
FastFlow is header-only, no need for building.
See the BUILD.ME file for instructions about building unit tests and examples.
FastFlow is currently actively supported for:
- Linux with gcc >4.8 x86_64
- Windows >=7 with MSVS >=2013
- Mac OS >=10.9 with gcc >4.8 or clang >=5
Although not officially supported (yet), FastFlow has been tested on:
- Linux/PPC with gcc
- Linux/ARM with gcc
Since version 2.0.4, FastFlow is expected to work on any platform with a C++11 compiler.
Windows platform can be particuarly slow in debug mode due to iterator debugging and secure crt layers. Release mode appers to be not affected by the issue. See http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/ahazelden/entry/visual_studio_stl/
The following preprocessor directives /D_SECURE_SCL=0; /D_HAS_ITERATOR_DEBUGGING=0 (i.e. ADD_DEFINITIONS(-D_SECURE_SCL=0 -D_HAS_ITERATOR_DEBUGGING=0) in cmake) might ameliorate the problem. Consider however that they cannot be used if the application links libraries compiled with different options (e.g. Boost).
- Massimo Torquati torquati@di.unipi.it (maintainer)
- Marco Aldinucci aldinuc@di.unito.it (co-maintainer)
- Maurizio Drocco maurizio.drocco@gmail.com (co-maintainer)
Aldinucci, M. , Danelutto, M. , Kilpatrick, P. and Torquati, M. (2017). Fastflow: High‐Level and Efficient Streaming on Multicore. In Programming multi‐core and many‐core computing systems (eds S. Pllana and F. Xhafa).
