Nested Parallelization with OpenMP

OpenMP is widely accepted as a de facto standard for shared memory parallel programming in Fortran, C and C++. Nested parallelization has been included in the first OpenMP specification, but it took a few years until the first commercially available compilers supported this optional part of the specification. We employed nested parallelization using OpenMP in three production codes: a C++ code for content-based image retrieval, a C++ code for the computation of critical points in multi-block CFD datasets, and a multi-block Navier-Stokes solver written in Fortran90. In this paper we discuss the opportunities as well as the deficiencies of the nested parallelization support in OpenMP.