Performance optimisation of sequential programs on multi-core processors

With the increasing availability of multi-core processors, the sequential programming paradigm is no longer capable of harnessing the full power of processors. Parallel programming is however, generally complex and requires more expertise than the traditional sequential programming model. On the other hand, there are a multitude of optimisations for sequential programs that can exploit multiple cores without much effort by the programmer. The primary goal of this research is to identify available tools and techniques to aid programmers in the process of optimising C/C++ programs for execution on multi-processors. Using a couple of example programs we show that improved performance is possible using the proposed methodology. However, the choice of optimisation is dependent on the type of problem being solved and there is no generic best choice for all classes of porblems.