running functions in parallel on multiple processors

[Michael Schmitt]

Hello.

What is the usual way for running functions in parallel on a 
multiple-processor machine. Actually I want to run a single computationally 
expensive function with different parameter sets.
Running the functions in different threads doesn't seem to work, because of 
the global interpreter lock.
Would it help to fork processes, which run the single function with a given 
parameter set? Is there any simple way, how this forked worker process can 
report its result back to the controlling process?

Thanks.
Best regards, 
Michael