I'm really happy to see this conversation.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 7:45 AM, Charles Henry <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:czhenry@gmail.com">czhenry@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="im">On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 5:32 PM, Peter Brinkmann<br>
<<a href="mailto:peter.brinkmann@googlemail.com">peter.brinkmann@googlemail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
> I don't think users have anything to gain from fine-grained control of<br>
> threads. That seems like an optimization hint that may or may not be<br>
> helpful, depending on a lot of factors that are not obvious and will differ<br>
> from machine to machine. In any case, I don't want to have to think about<br>
> threads when patching any more than I want to think about, say, NEON<br>
> optimizations.<br>
<br>
</div>I'm still making the case here:<br>
Suppose you're writing a patch and you run up against the limitations<br>
of a single-threaded process. Then, you take some portion in a<br>
sub-patch and drop in a "thread~" object. You're able to selectively<br>
add the functionality where it matters to you *and* only when you<br>
actually need it.<br>
<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Isn't this problem addressed with the [pd~] object? It runs it's patches in it's own process instead of thread and I'm not sure why, but it will do what your describing, no?</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
The generalizable case is much more preferrable, I agree, but as you<br>
say further on, you might develop an application that incurs<br>
significant overhead--and may not be appropriate for all applications.<br>
<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I see the next important step as making the general cases easier to handle. A per-thread context such as IOhannes and Peter describe above seems like the best approach to allowing a program to run multiple instances of pd in a much more predictable manner, while it still allows for backwards compatibility (via a default 'legacy' context). I see parallel processing as a different topic, although it will be easier to implement once the static variables are taken care of.</div>
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