Question

I’m trying to parallelize a ray tracer in C, but the execution time is not dropping as the number of threads increase. The code I have so far is:

main2(thread function):

float **result=malloc(width * sizeof(float*));
int count=0;
for (int px=0;, px<width; ++px)
{
     ...
     for (int py=0; py<height; ++py)
     {
         ...
         float *scaled_color=malloc(3*sizeof(float));
         scaled_color[0]=...
         scaled_color[1]=...
         scaled_color[2]=...

         result[count]=scaled_color;
         count++;
         ...
      }
}
...
return (void *) result;

main:
pthread_t threads[nthreads];
 for (i=0;i<nthreads;i++)
 {
      pthread_create(&threads[i], NULL, main2, &i);
 }

 float** result_handler;

 for (i=0; i<nthreads; i++)
 {
      pthread_join(threads[i], (void *) &result_handler);
      int count=0;

      for(j=0; j<width;j++)
     {
          for(k=0;k<height;k++)
          {
               float* scaled_color=result_handler[count];
               count ++;
               printf...
           }
           printf("\n");
       }
  }

main2 returns a float ** so that the picture can be printed in order in the main function. Anyone know why the exectution time is not dropping (e.g. it runs longer with 8 threads than with 4 threads when it’s supposed to be the other way around)?

Answer 1

It’s not enough to add threads, you need to actually split the task as well. Looks like you’re doing the same job in every thread, so you get n copies of the result with n threads.