Synchronizing Parallel Geometric Algorithms on Multi-core Machines

A thread synchronization mechanism called Spatial Locks for parallel geometric algorithms is presented. We demonstrate that Spatial Locks can ensure thread synchronization on geometric algorithms that perform concurrent operations over geometric surfaces and shapes in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space, considering also that these operations follow a certain order of processing. A parallel algorithm for mesh simplification was implemented using Spatial Locks to show its usefulness when parallelizing geometric algorithms with ease on multi-core machines. Experimental results illustrate the advantage of using this synchronization mechanism, where significant computational improvement can be achieved.