There's a nice threadpool library (http://threadpool.sourceforge.net) mentioned on a previous thread that I took a look at and noticed it had a basic future impl. of its own. Given that there's a future library under review, I swapped out the original future impl. in the schedule function, plus added a lazy_schedule (from the examples @ http://braddock.com/~braddock/future/ ) for fun. I replaced everything in future.hpp from the threadpool lib with: /* * Copyright (c) 2005-2007 Philipp Henkel * * Use, modification, and distribution are subject to the * Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file * LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt) * * http://threadpool.sourceforge.net * * Chris Fairles, May 2008 - Modified to replace custom future implementation with boost-reviewed version */ #pragma once #include <boost/future/future.hpp> namespace boost { namespace threadpool { template<class Pool, class F> future<typename result_of< F() >::type> schedule(Pool& pool, F const& task) { typedef typename result_of< F() >::type result_type; promise<result_type> prom; pool.schedule(future_wrapper<result_type>(task, prom)); return future<result_type> (prom); } template<class Pool, class F> future<typename result_of< F() >::type> lazy_schedule(Pool& pool, F const& task) { typedef typename result_of< F() >::type result_type; promise<result_type> prom; future<void> guard = prom.get_needed_future(); guard.add_callback(bind(&Pool::schedule, pool, future_wrapper<result_type>(task, prom))); return future<result_type> (prom); } } } // namespace boost::threadpool where #include <boost/future/future.hpp> is the header for the lib under review (and pardon the pragma windowism). I haven't tested it throughly but on msvc9, the most trivial of cases work (including catching exceptions) so YMMV. Ex. int task_int_1() { throw std::exception("task_int_1 exception"); return 1; } int task_int_2() { return 2; } int main() { pool tp; tp.size_controller().resize(2); future<int> result1 = schedule(tp, &task_int_1); future<int> result2 = schedule(tp, &task_int_2); try { int val = result1 + result2; std::cout << "you will never see this value... " << val << std::endl; } catch (std::exception const& ex) } std::cerr << ex.what() << std::endl; } } Something to play around with anyway. Cheers, Chris