Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] interesting note on quad core chips

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

I don't understand people's obsession with single apps using multiple cores of their processor. Sure, in some cases it's nice, but I usually am running several programs, and even operating systems, at a time. I don't need a single program to use up all my CPU power. I'd much rather have it divided between several apps.

I'm pained when I have to use somebody's old single core Pentium 4 even if it is a fairly fast CPU (3+ GHz). Doing multiple tasks is noticeably slower. Running multiple operating systems on those CPUs just feels like it's going at a crawl.

Having a single app use multiple cores is mostly useful for games and heavy number crunching. For most people it's more useful to be able to rip a cd, use your web browser, work on a document, and check your email all at the same time. Most of the time people use several apps at a time and not just a single app.

For most cases it's not that hard to write a multi-threaded program anyway. If nothing else write each thread as it's own service and enable your services to communicate as needed. Problems that don't easily divide into services are usually easily parallelized stuff like 3D rendering. It's not like we have 100 core processors right now where you'd want to start splitting normal logic down into parallel tracks to peak every lil bit of power out of the system.
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