Cilk Arts, developer of the Cilk++ platform which lets C++ developers more easily exploit multicore processors, has joined Intel. Intel acquired the entire development team and all of Cilk Arts products and technology.
According to Intel's James Reinders, Cilk technology will complement tools such as OpenMP and Intel Threading Building Blocks. Over the coming weeks, Cilk++ will be integrated into Intel parallel tools like Intel Parallel Studio.
Cilk technology offers parallel extensions that are tightly tied into a compiler. This has pluses and minuses when compared with compiler independent methods like Intel Threading Building Blocks. Having both is better than either alone, and both will have strong followings.
The Cilk++ cross-platform solution lets developers maximize application performance on multicore processors by providing a set of extensions for C++, coupled with a runtime system for multicore-enabled applications. Cilk++ enables rapid development, testing, and deployment of high-performance multicore applications.
Cilk++ addresses two large problems:
- Enabling programmers to develop multithreaded (or parallel) applications; and
- Providing a smooth path to multicore for legacy applications that otherwise cannot easily leverage the performance capabilities of multicore processors.
With Cilk++, developers can retain the serial semantics of existing applications, use existing serial methodologies for programming, tooling, debugging, and regression testing.
