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Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 12:17:36 +0100 (CET)
To: lsmith@php.net
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Multithreading
From: bart@mediawave.nl ("Bart de Boer")

> I really do not see the point is worrying all too much about multi
> threading in PHP. Writing proper multi threaded code is hard and why
> bother? Your server is going to be busy doing tons of other things at
> the same time. So all your CPU's and cores should have plenty of things
> to do. Also PHP is a glue language, so by this virtue it should not
> require multi threading in order to get decent performance/latency for a
>

History tells us that, as hardware performance increases, people will
always utalise the extra power by creating more demanding scripts (and
software). We most likely wouldn't do the things we do today if we still
had the hardware we had back when PHP3 was out. Since it currently seems
to be the trend that performance gains are made by adding more cores to
the processor, I think the server software must adjust to be able to
utalise this. I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more multithreading
software in the near future.

Although you're right that the webserver already does multithreading
itself. And PHP is able to hitch a ride on this capability. I just think
that maybe, if the multithreading trend really takes off, it may one day
become a necessity for PHP to support this. If so, I don't think it will
be in the near future. So there's still plenty of time to think about
this. :)

Of course this is all "what-if" speculation. But I thought it's worth
noting at least. :)



> the language. So I welcome whatever Sara is playing with that can be
> added as an extension to PHP.