[PD] parallelism in pd

[Karl MacMillan]

On Tue, 2002-04-16 at 11:34, Andrew (Andy) W. Schmeder wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> I'd like to know how PD uses parallelism to take advantage of SMP
> systems... i.e. does it use threads to dispatch the work across multiple
> CPUs?
> 

Not exactly - though the GUI is in a separate process and some of the
objects use threads (readsf~). Be aware that there is really no reason
to use threads until your cpu usage is at 100 percent. The computational
need of the patches is normally constrained by the availability of data
from the soundcard. In other words, you can't process audio you don't
have yet, so if - for example - you use 25 percent of two cpus you are
simply spending longer waiting for audio data.

Karl

> -andy
-- 
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Karl W. MacMillan                                 
Computer Music Department                        
Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University
karlmac at peabody.jhu.edu                         
mambo.peabody.jhu.edu/~karlmac