I current have the NON-threaded version of xfree86 installed via fink on 10.2.3. What is the difference between it and the threqaded version? Should I run the threaded version? Benefits? Negatives? TIA! --Corey
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The threaded version can be faster, particularly on dual-CPU machines, but there are some applications (notably Matlab) that dont' work with it. I'd suggest waiting for XFree86 4.3, which will be threaded, and install that - it should be here RSN.
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Disclaimer: I haven't looked at the X11R6 code in quite a while, so I don't know much about this specific case. But generally...
Threaded applications are only faster on multiple-CPU machines, and only at the times more than one thread is running. On single-CPU machines, threaded applications are slower, unless you have some big overhead in your code (which is a design problem).
They also use more memory, but with today's ram size that's not generally a problem unless you run a lot of threads (on OS X each extra thread takes up about half a meg virtual memory by default). But ofc, when running many applications more memory equals more swapping.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I current have the NON-threaded version of xfree86 installed via fink on 10.2.3. What is the difference between it and the threqaded version? Should I run the threaded version? Benefits? Negatives? TIA! --Corey
The threaded version can be faster, particularly on dual-CPU machines, but there are some applications (notably Matlab) that dont' work with it. I'd suggest waiting for XFree86 4.3, which will be threaded, and install that - it should be here RSN.
Disclaimer: I haven't looked at the X11R6 code in quite a while, so I don't know much about this specific case. But generally...
Threaded applications are only faster on multiple-CPU machines, and only at the times more than one thread is running. On single-CPU machines, threaded applications are slower, unless you have some big overhead in your code (which is a design problem).
They also use more memory, but with today's ram size that's not generally a problem unless you run a lot of threads (on OS X each extra thread takes up about half a meg virtual memory by default). But ofc, when running many applications more memory equals more swapping.