Forking and multiprocessors

sniff · 02-16-2003, 10:57 AM

Hello,

If I use forking to create a child process in linux, will linux run that process on a different processor to the main process if it will mean the program runs quicker?

Hope that makes sense...
Sniff

llama_meme · 02-16-2003, 11:11 AM

If you have a multiprocessor system, it may choose to do so.

Alex

Silent Bob · 02-16-2003, 12:15 PM

It depends on what the priority of the process/its child are and the priorities of other processes on the system.

Processes are put into a reasonably complicated scheduler which decides which processes run and where. If you really need it to run faster then upping the priority will certainly help.

If you don't have many other processes running and the extra processors are idle then I would imagine that the child would be run on another processor to increase CPU utilisation.

sniff · 02-17-2003, 11:26 AM

Hi,
Sounds like it might work, I will let you know how I get on. I'm writing programs that model population genetics and they are very processor intensive. Is there a way of increasing the priority of a process in code?

Sniff

llama_meme · 02-18-2003, 05:28 PM

man 3 nice

might be what you want.

Alex