[PD] pd with SMP?

[Jonathan Nelson]

Hello,

I'm helping develop an installation using pd (linux).  We are quite poor,
but still manage to have the choice between using a single celeron 533 MHz
processor, or a SMP system with two celerons running at 523 MHz.

There are four cheap sound cards in this system to give us eight outputs.  
I think these must all take their input from one pd, as we need to
smoothly move between them.

The question is this: 

Is there a good way to take advantage of both processors in the SMP
configuration (and would this provide a significant performance gain over
a single processor)?  

Is Open Sound Control (OSC) the only way to do this (run a pd on each
processor, with a mixing stage in one of them, and OSC providing the
pipe)?  Does anyone know if the overhead associated with OSC would make
this a bad idea?  Anything better?  Any simple solutions?

I hope some of that made sense.

Thanks!

-j