Threads vs Processes

[Grant Edwards]

On 2006-07-27, sjdevnull at yahoo.com <sjdevnull at yahoo.com> wrote:

>> If you're sharing things, I would thread. I would not want to
>> pay the expense of a process.
>
> This is generally a false cost.  There are very few
> applications where thread/process startup time is at all a
> fast path,

Even if it were, on any sanely designed OS, there really isn't
any extra expense for a process over a thread.

> Moreover, to get at best a small performance gain you pay a
> huge cost by sacrificing memory protection within the threaded
> process.

Threading most certainly shouldn't be done in some attempt to
improve performance over a multi-process model.  It should be
done because it fits the algorithm better.  If the execution
contexts don't need to share data and can communicate in a
simple manner, then processes probably make more sense.  If the
contexts need to operate jointly on complex shared data, then
threads are usually easier.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  My life is a patio
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