Re: php and multithreading (additional arguments)

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:16 AM, Andi Gutmans <andi@zend.com> wrote: > Hi, > > I think that if we were ever to implement threading we would be best off > to enable spawning worker threads that have their own context with no > shared data (and therefore no requirement for locking). We could then > have a message passing API between the threads. > Advantages: > - Real multi-threading. > - Simple straightforward approach which doesn't require a comp. sci. > degree to use correctly. > - Very stable implementation. > > You can tell by this that: > a) I think GIL is not the way to go. It's more complex, not truly > multi-threaded, and implementation may never be 100%. > b) True multi-threading with data sharing in my opinion is a recipe for > disaster. Not only because of the implementation complexities but I > think it makes life very hard for the developer and requires a lot of > sophistication. > > So if I'd implement something I'd definitely do true multi-threading > with message passing (we basically already have the infrastructure with > TSRM to support that). Do I think this is a high priority item? Not > really but I can understand that it could add value to some. I think for > some Web requests it could actually allow for some parallel processing > with a rendezvous which could help reduce latency (not overall server > throughput). Then again, there'd be some overhead for having a > thread-safe build so I don't see this as something that would be enabled > by the masses - at least not initially. > > Andi > > > -- > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > > While this direction adds some overhead, I certainly like it's advantages over the others. +1 Eric Lee Stewart