On Tue, 2 Mar 2010, Jean-Paul Armache wrote:
Hello,
I know that this topic might've emerged earlier, but I was curious whether there were any plans to implement multi-threading into Chimera ?
Best regards,
Jean-Paul Armache
The short answer is that chimera is already multi-threaded. Chimera uses threads in some places, e.g., opening files so the GUI stays responsive. Other uses of threads are being added on a case-by-case basis. FYI, most of chimera is written in Python and the current Python implementation in C, that chimera uses, does not lend itself to multi-thread computational programming. So most of the benefits from multi-threading will come from the third-party computational libraries that chimera incorporates, so whether chimera uses multi-threading or not depends on our "suppliers". And there isn't much multi-thread use yet. So lots of room for improvement. If you're really asking if you should buy a multi-core computer to run chimera, the answer is that you're not going to see much of an improvement today. You would be better off buying a faster computer with fewer cores than a slower computer with more cores. - Greg