Parallelization of Bulk Operations for STL Dictionaries

Abstract. STL dictionaries like map and set are commonly used in C++ programs. We consider parallelizing two of their bulk operations, namely the construction from many elements, and the insertion of many elements at a time. Practical algorithms are proposed for these tasks. The implementation is completely generic and engineered to provide best performance for the variety of possible input characteristics. It features transparent integration into the STL. This can make programs profit in an easy way from multi-core processing power. The performance measurements show the practical usefulness on real-world multi-core machines with up to eight cores.