Paralellism/ dual/quad core in the GIMP

[Marc]

About this question in comp.graphics.apps.gimp:

I do not have a dual/quad core, so I can't try my insights...


http://groups.google.be/group/comp.graphics.apps.gimp/browse_thread/thread/cef0afb7852acaab#

How far is parallelism implemented in the GIMP??  ie, if you have a large
job for image processing, you can (most of the times) divide the problem,
so that the job can be divided over your 2 (dual core) to 4 (quad core)
processors.

I have not heard about this in eg Photoshop, although it is possible that
such things are/become implemented.

I've had a university course in paralellism in 1987, that's a long time
ago ...

I'm from the unix/linux world, and if somebody would ask me what can be
divided as well, I would say: cpu eating jobs like (online) video
(de)compression ...


$$$
If somebody could try this:

It could be an idea to declare *more* processors than you have, to make the
parallelism more fine grained.
There will be an upper limit though ..
Declare eg 8 processors if you have 2  --> processors should be charged >>
50%
Mention the fact that declaring more processors makes the division of the
problem harder, so that the time you wait becomes longer, while your
processors' charge will show about 100%

"There must be a trade off, and an ideal set of parameters."  (a sentence
you'll find in all problem solving techniques)...  An,d you'll be able to
make a nice graph with the parameters as axes (declared versus real number
of processors)

In fact, I suppose it will work to declare more processors than you have
because these guys in linux know about clustering too ...



-- 
--
Shortwave transmissions in English, Francais, Nederlands, Deutsch, Suid-Afrikaans, Chinese, Dansk, Urdu, Cantonese, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, ...
http://users.fulladsl.be/spb13810/swlist/   Updated every month or so ....