Will multithreading make python less popular?

Mensanator mensanator at aol.com
Fri Feb 20 09:47:12 EST 2009


On Feb 20, 4:36�am, sturlamolden <sturlamol... at yahoo.no> wrote:
> On Feb 20, 12:19 am, Mensanator <mensana... at aol.com> wrote:
>
> > What am I actually seeing? If Python only uses one of the cores,
> > why do both light up?
>
> Because of OS scheduling. You have more than one process running. The
> Python process does not stay on one core. Try to put CPython into a
> tight loop ("while 1: pass"). You will see ~50% use of both cores. If
> you had 4 cores, you would see ~25% use.

Saw that once when I had access to a four core machine.

>
> > Is everything much more complicated (due to
> > OS scheduling, etc.) than the simple explanations of GIL?
>
> No.

Don't you mean "yes"?

> Your Python code cannot use more than one core simultaneously.
> It's just that scheduling happens so fast and so often that you don't
> notice it.

Or that the Task Manager can't track the switches fast
enough to show the interleaving giving the illusion that
both cores are operating simultaneously.



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