I have an application where I would like to use modern parallel programming. I have a specific case in mind and I currently handle it by creating separate threads. I will explain it at a high level and I am interested in hearing suggestions for which approach I should take (eg tasks, parallel loop, etc).
Here is a description of the problem in generic terms. It is not exactly what I am doing but it is similar enough so that you can understand:
My application is Win32 dialog with a tree control that allows selecting different directories on the hard drive. It searches for files of a certain type that contain images in a proprietary file format. Each image file is then loaded and rendered as a thumbnail in my dialog. It is basically an image browser. There may be 100s of these images in a directory so they must be rendered in a separate thread to prevent locking up the application. And, the user should be able to change the directory while they are being rendered. So, obviously, there must be a way to cancel the operation.
It is obvious to me that I must have some routine that can be started and possibly canceled. I would like to be able to take advantage of multiple CPU cores while rendering the files since they are all independent. Is this a classic case of using tasks, task groups, parallel for loop? I'm curious to see how others would tackle this.
Thanks!
The Hinged Newt
