Balanced Parallel Task Scheduler

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Difficulty

Reading material

Create a task scheduler that is parameterized in the number of threads to use. Let’s call this parameter thread_count.

The scheduler should create thread_count threads. Each thread should follow the same simple algorithm:

while unclaimed_tasks:
    task = claim task
    task.perform()

The difficulty lies in the fact that the worker threads have shared state, which needs to be synchronized. This means that if threads read/write to the same variable, special precautions have to be taken.

Implement the task scheduler described above. Make it available through a factory function

TaskScheduler balanced_parallel(unsigned thread_count);

1. Evaluation

Create a script that takes at least 20 seconds to render.
Render it using the balanced parallel scheduler, using 1..N threads, where N is the number of logical cores your machine has. Keep track of the rendering times.
Make a little graph (e.g., in Excel) that shows how rendering times change with the number of threads.