Abstract Parallel programming with tasks — task parallel programming — is a promising approach to simplifying multithreaded programming in the chip multiprocessor (CMP) era. Tasks are used to describe independent units of work that can be assigned to threads at runtime in a way that is transparent to the programmer. Thus, the programmer can concentrate on identifying tasks and leave it to the runtime system to take advantage of the potential parallelism. Supporting the task abstraction on heterogeneous CMPs is more challenging than on conventional CMPs. In this article, we take a look at a lightweight task model and its implementation on the Cell processor, the most prominent heterogeneous CMP available today. Choosing a simple task model over a more complex one makes it possible to target fine-grained parallelism and still improve much in terms of programmability.