Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Thread Safe Graphics Library For Visualizing Parallelism, Joel C. Adams, Patrick A. Crain, Mark B. Van Der Stel

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Multicore processors are now the standard CPU architecture, and multithreaded parallel programs are needed to take full advantage of such CPUs. New tools are needed to help students learn how to design and build such parallel programs. In this paper, we present the thread-safe graphics library (TSGL), a new C++11 library that allows different threads to draw to a shared Canvas, which is updated in approximate real-time. Using TSGL, instructors and students can create visualizations that illustrate multithreaded behavior. We present three multithreaded applications that illustrate the use of TSGL to help students see and understand how an application is …