Re: libthr and 1:1 threading.

Robert Watson wrote:
> You should notice marked interactivity and UI latency improvements with
> threaded GUI apps over libc_r because GUI threads will generally no longer
> be blocked when disk I/O and blocking I/O occurs.  For example,
> applications like Open Office, Netscape, et al, really get a lot better
> with 1:1.  Likewise, non-interactive applications that are disk
> I/O-intensive, such as mysql, will also perform substantially better
> because a thread that hits blocking using an interface that doesn't
> support non-blocking I/O (such as the file system) won't clog up the
> application.

Is the disk I/O really that big of an issue?  All writes will
be on underlying non-blocking descriptors; I guess you are
saying that the interleaved I/O is more important, further
down the system call interface than the top, and this becomes
an issue?

It seems to me that maybe the correct fix for this is to use
AIO instead of non-blocking I/O, then?

The GUI thread issues are something I hadn't considered; I
don't generally think of user space CPU intensive operations
like that, but I guess it has to be rendered some time.  8-).

Has anyone tried compiling X11 to use libthr?

Also, any ETA on the per process signal mask handing bug in
libthr?  Might not be safe to convert everything up front, in
a rush of eager enthusiasm...

-- Terry