Problem in threading

[It's me]

That's an OT topic.   :=)

There were lots of discussions about this topic in the old days.   No need
to dive into it again.

Windows context switching overhead is very high.   You would be lucky to get
it down to the mid-30ms.   OS/2 can get it down to less then 10.   And for
OS/2, thread swithing time is only a few machine instructions....OT.OT.


"David Bolen" <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote in message
news:uacrvhfdh.fsf at fitlinxx.com...
> "It's me" <itsme at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> > It depends on what "help" means to you.   Both Windows and Unix (and
it's
> > variances) are considered "thread-weak" OSes.  So, using thread will
come
> > with some cost.   The long gone IBM OS/2 is a classic example of a
> > "thread-strong" OS.
> (...)
>
> Interesting - can you clarify what you perceive as the differences
> between a thread-weak and thread-strong OS?  If given the choice, I
> would probably refer to Windows (at least NT based systems, let's
> ignore 9x) as thread-strong, and yes, often think of Windows as
> preferring thread based solutions, while Unix would often prefer
> process based.
>
> Windows is far more efficient at handling large numbers of threads
> than it is processes, with much less overhead and there is lots of
> flexibility in terms of managing threads and their resources.  Threads
> are first class OS objects at the kernel and scheduler level (waitable
> and manageable).
>
> I can't think of anything offhand specific that OS/2 did with respect
> to threads that isn't as well supported by current Win32 systems.
>
> -- David