software coding (2005-07-14)

[Old Forum Archivist]

Hello, does anyone know whether WAsP is multithreaded? In other words, has anyone seen an improvement in performance when using a computer with two or more processors?

regards

Rik

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Hello,



This is something that we've been asked several times over the last couple of years.



WAsP is not multi-threaded, so it won't work any faster on a dual-processor machine than on an otherwise identical single-processor machine. Of course, any other applications would run more responsively.



In the past, we've advised people that maybe running two instances of WAsP might allow you to exploit dual processors, but we decided to test that recently and found that it doesn't work that way. In fact, we've discovered some very strange performance variation patterns as the number of instances and processors is varied, and we don't really understand them yet.



We bought a dual-processor test machine, one in which it's quite easy to disable one of the processors. We've been running tests on it over the last few days and are still digesting the results. When we're a bit clearer about what's happening, we'll write up a document and put it on the website at www.wasp.dk.



Of course we are keen to discover any changes we could make to the WAsP code to enable it to exploit dual processors. If we find any, then they would be introduced as WAsP 9 feature: there will definitely not be any improvements in the (imminent) WAsP 8.2 release. If you're considering buying a dual processor machine to try to speed up your WAsP calculations - don't. At least, not yet. For now, it's probably better to spend the money on a fast processor.

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