[REBOL] [Threading] continued
From: maximo:meteorstudios at: 29-Jan-2004 17:58
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jason Cunliffe [mailto:[jason--cunliffe--verizon--net]]
> Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 4:44 PM
> To: [rebol-list--rebol--com]
> Subject: [REBOL] Re: Threading continued
>
> Can you briefly describe any use-cases where this threading
> would make a
> difference .
one example for threading useage is that you can crunch information WHILE you are also
waiting on a port.
this basically allows your server to be up all the time, although he is busy with any
matter of processes.
when creating a render queue or a transaction-based system, you can tell the system to
do things, and he won't do them right away, but you can still send the commands and receive
confirmations that your processes have been done.
then if you need information, another thread, can lookup the processing queue and verify
if there is yet some processing to be done on that item. if there is then it either
processes it right away in its own thread, if possible, before returning the new and
improved data. this doesn't keep the other thread from continuing to crunch the other
items in the list while they are not needed.
if you didn't have threads, then you'd have to wait for the current processing to finish
before your server even responds to any new request.
threading allows your server to be more responsive, altough it also slows down each of
those responses as they process simultaneously. As maarteen explained, if threading
is implemented virtually, then the cost of tracking/handling the threads means that you
remove some processing cycles from each of the threads themselves.
HTH!
Maarten, I am not an expert, but would it be possible, with the design you have, to
throttle some threads, so that the server can allocate more processing where it really
needs it? like giving less time to a thread which handles communications and more to
another which does heavy number crunching ... or the opposite, if server querry/response
is more important than the rate at which your processing queue actually flushes itself?
-MAx
PS, Maarten, if you DO decide to tackle this threading project... I WILL be checking
it out, as I know some uses I'd make of it.
