GraphicsMagick and Multi-Core

As some of you may be aware, the focus of the GraphicsMagick 1.3 
release will be to fully update GraphicsMagick to support multi-core 
systems using the OpenMP programming extension.  This allows 
GraphicsMagick to take full advantage of modern systems which come 
with one or more CPUs supporting one or more cores.  A couple of years 
ago CPU vendors started to hit the limit when it comes to cranking up 
clock rates so they have refocused on providing CPUs with multiple 
cores at a lower clock rate.  A result of this is that legacy software 
often runs slower on the new CPUs.  Multi-threading supports taking 
advantage of all these cores.

I am happy to report that extremely good progress is being made with 
updating GraphicsMagick to the new multi-core world.  Most 
GraphicsMagick algorithms have now been re-written for OpenMP and some 
of the slowest algorithms are seeing an almost linear speedup as CPU 
cores are added.

Please visit the page at http://www.graphicsmagick.org/OpenMP.html to 
read about GraphicsMagick progress.  A table is provided which shows 
the degree of performance boost on a typical system as processor cores 
are added.

While Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2005 and 2005 support 
OpenMP, I do not have a license for these compilers.  I also do not 
have a multi-core Windows system to test on.  As a result, Windows is 
being left behind.  If someone can contribute time to this, or buy me 
a new Windows development system, it would hasten multi-thread support 
for Windows.

Thanks,

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
[email protected], http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge
Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes
Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world
http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/