Parallel Python

[Sergei Organov]

nmm1 at cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) writes:
> In article <1168452879.866265.36880 at i39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
> "sturlamolden" <sturlamolden at yahoo.no> writes:
[...]
> |> I wonder if too much emphasis is put on thread programming these days.
> |> Threads may be nice for programming web servers and the like, but not
> |> for numerical computing. Reading books about thread programming, one
> |> can easily get the impression that it is 'the' way to parallelize
> |> numerical tasks on computers with multiple CPUs (or multiple CPU
> |> cores). But if threads are inherently designed and implemented to stay
> |> idle most of the time, that is obviously not the case.
>
> You have to distinguish "lightweight processes" from "POSIX threads"
> from the generic concept.  It is POSIX and Microsoft threads that are
> inherently like that,

Do you mean that POSIX threads are inherently designed and implemented
to stay idle most of the time?! If so, I'm afraid those guys that
designed POSIX threads won't agree with you. In particular, as far as I
remember, David R. Butenhof said a few times in comp.programming.threads
that POSIX threads were primarily designed to meet parallel programming
needs on SMP, or at least that was how I understood him.

-- Sergei.