Thread usage

[Frank Warmerdam]

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 12:33:12 +0100, Dirk Tilger <dirk at advtechme.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I readthrough the discussions on thread safety during the last two
> years and I'm glad, mapserver seems to be thread safe at many places.
> However, it does not take advantage of threads by itself - as far as I
> can see.
>
> Is the use of threads problematic at some point or is it just not yet
> implemented?

Dirk,

I think it would be fair to say that taking advantage of threads for
performance improvements has not been a priority for the core
developers.  Some things could be done but it from my point of
view the benefits are outweighed by the complications.

I think it would be much better to just run multiple MapServer
instances on a multi-cpu system or build mapscript based apps
that process seperate maps in different threads.

Improving thread safety for inherently multithreaded environments
(such as Java MapScript) is an ongoing effort, but currently I
don't think anyone is focused on really taking advantage of
multithreading to accelerate single map renders.

Best regards,
--
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent