From: keith smith > I was reading on computers and phones having multiple cores and > programming for multiple cores - http://www.linux-mag.com/id/8274/ > The 2nd to the last paragraph starts with "If you write software, > you should be paying close attention to this trend." > That got me to thinking about how to do so with PHP. > Anyone writing PHP code to take advantage of multiple cores? Or > is this even necessary? If you're using PHP as it's usually used (running under the apache prefork model as a provider of dynamically generated web pages, with a DB of some sort as a backend), then you have less to do than you might think. Each apache instance is a separate process. So if you have 10 apache processes running, you could use up to 10 CPUs at the same time. And you're generally storing persistent data in the DB, or in sessions, or with memcached, so those generally handle the annoying locking/race problems with multithreaded apps. If you're using PHP on the CLI, then things get a little more complex. The usual way to deal with multiprocessor things is to have one master process, which fork()/exec()s several slave processes, which do all the actual work. Work units are assigned to the slave processes using whatever you want. You have to handle locking of shared resources yourself, but using a DB can make that a bit easier. More specifics about what it is you're doing would probably lead to better and more concrete advice. -- Matt G / Dances With Crows The Crow202 Blog: http://crow202.org/wordpress/ There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss