Re: ithreads and sockets

At 09:17 +0000 8/31/03, Steve Schein wrote:
>  > If you're going to need thousands of threads, you're going to need a
>>  lot of RAM.  And the copying of data becomes a considerable CPU
>>  burden as well.  But I don't need a lot of data, you say.  Well, you
>>  do need modules, and modules contain subroutines and variables.  And
>  > those are all data.
><<< It isn't clear to me that I would ever need more than three threads
>(one for each socket), but even those are seemingly expensive.

Well, in that case I don't think there really is a problem.  Only 
three threads is not a problem, especially if you can start them 
early, preferably during compile time.  Thousands of threads, that 
_is_ a problem.  ;-)


>  > If you still want to use Perl ithreads, and are not worried about
>>  performance per se, you might want to have a look at the forks.pm
>>  module I wrote.  It basically has the same interface as Perl
>>  ithreads, but uses fork() to start threads (hence its name).  It also
>>  uses a TCP connection for each thread that has shared variables, so
>  > that may turn into a lot of sockets in your case.
><<< At this point I don't think the ithreads approach is a logical path
>for my needs.  Perhaps I'll take another look at it when Perl v6 is
>released.  I can probably get away with running small parallel processes
>for external communications and sharing the data via pipes, shared
>memory, etc.

That is definitely an option.  Perl 6 will have threads running as 
the blood through its system (well, Parrot continuations, actually, 
but who cares  ;-)


>  > I'm afraid there isn't too much chatting going on here lately.  But
>  > the list does get monitored by some people.  ;-)
><<< Yes, it was quite helpful and will likely save me a great deal of
>time and headaches.

There's something to be said to be "modern" and there is something to 
be said for being "conservative".  In retrospect, if you only need 
three threads, then I think it would definitely an option.  But if 
you're cool with pipes and shared memory, then please use that: it 
will also work!


>My sincerest thanks for your time and wisdom.

You're welcome  ;-)


Liz