Parallel and generic pipe-and-filter architectures with teetime

Pipe-and-Filter (P&amp;F) is a well-known and often used architectural style. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no P&amp;F framework which can model and execute generic P&amp;F architectures. For example, the frameworks Fastflow, StreamIt, and Spark do not support multiple input and output streams per filter and thus cannot model branches. Other frameworks focus on very specific use cases and neglect type-safety when interconnecting filters. Furthermore, an efficient parallel execution of P&amp;F architectures is still an open challenge. Although some available frameworks can execute filters in parallel, there is much potential for optimization. Unfortunately, most frameworks have a fixed execution strategy which cannot be altered without major changes. In this paper, we present our P&amp;F framework TeeTime. It is able to model and to execute arbitrary P&amp;F architectures. Simultaneously, it is open for modifications in order to experiment with the P&amp;F style. Moreover, it allows to execute filters in parallel by utilizing the capabilities of contemporary multi-core processor systems. Besides a description of its major features, we also present an application example in Java.</p