OpenMP with parallel loops or asynchronous tasks: a performance evaluation focusing the NQueens benchmark

This paper presents a performance evaluation of the NQueens benchmark implemented using OpenMP in parallel loop and asynchronous tasks versions. Our experiments aimed to evaluate which parallel strategy reaches the best performance, as well as to verify whether different compiler tools suporting OpenMP affect the results. First, we evaluate the NQueens version available in BOTS suite. Then, two new versions with optimizations were coded and tested. Experimental results suggest that our asynchronous tasks version outperforms the parallel loops version on performance. Besides, it seems that different compilers may impact performance on both OpenMP NQueens versions.