OpenMP: a Standard for Directive Based Parallel Programming

• While standardization and support for these threaded APIs has come a long way,
• their use is still predominantly restricted to system programmers as opposed to application programmers.
• One of the reasons for this is that APIs such as Pthreads are considered to be low-level primitives.
• Conventional wisdom indicates that a large class of applications can be efficiently supported by higher level constructs (or directives)
• which rid the programmer of the mechanics of manipulating threads.
• Such directive-based languages have existed for a long time,
• but only recently have standardization efforts succeeded in the form of OpenMP.