At 08:08 PM 6/17/00 -0400, Rick Yazwinski wrote: >> And since a Java process is >> single-process by >> design, I assume even a second processor would not be able to >> speed this >> up. > >Wouldn't this depend on the architecture's implementation of threads? I'd >expect on a truely multitasking box (Solaris or Linux, for example) with >multiple processors that you would see a performance improvement.
I was also mystified by this comment, as my dual processor Dell box running Windows NT will definitely use both processors, which gives VERY noticible performance improvements - and also uncovers a lot of bugs in multi-threaded code which was written on a single-processor machine :-( I'm not sure where the original poster got the idea that Java is "single process by design". One of the problems of a naive design which spawns lots of threads is that it can hog all of the processors even on a large server with 32 or more processors. One of the more subtle reasons to use thread pooling is to control this kind of anti-social behavior.
