\begin{Scott Howard}
> The real benefit of multi-proc machines is when you're running multiple
> CPU intensive processes, or when you're running multi-threaded processes.
and with the way unix is designed, most tasks are made up of multiple
processes. so unix adapts to smp very well (unlike the windows
"monolithic apps" approach).
iirc, linux (at least 2.2) does *not* spread threads around on to
separate cpus.
once you (not you personally, scott) calm down from the initial "but
we MUST be better!", you'll realise that with typical unix workloads,
and the way cpu caching works with intel smp, its probably faster not
to. if you have the sort of threaded app that does scale well (because
multiple threads are not writing to the same area of memory), then it
will also run equally well as multiple processes (since you no longer
really need the shared address space).
(ie: threads are a crock ;)
--
- Gus
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