Threading conceptual question

[dsavitsk]

I am working on an application (on Win2k) based loosly upon the
SimpleHTTPServer.  Each request from a client will cause a bunch of code to
run on the server which may take from less than a second to several minutes.
I don't want the server to complete the first process before it starts
another, that is, i don't want it to lock up from one request.  I also don't
care what order the processes finnish in, as typically they will have
nothing to do with one another.

Is this the sort of thing that is solvable with threads? and maybe more
specifically with win32process.beginthreadex()? also will i need to
recompile python (please say no)?

also, i am about to buy a new server, so the question is, do i want/need
more than one processor to do this sort of thing?

thanks all,
doug