Multi-threaded client and SL and Sansar

[Steve Mahfouz]

Hi all,

If this topic has been beaten to death in here, my apologies. I don't read this forum all the time.

My understanding is that the official SL client is not multi-threaded, except for a texture picker ? Very fuzzy on the details and very open to correction.

If it's not multi-threaded, is there any hope it ever will be, or has that hope died with the coming advent of Sansar ? I would think Sansar would take priority in development over SL at this point, but what do I know.

Thank you all in advance!

Steve (in SL since 2005, I'm sure some of you are older than I)

[Monti Messmer]

Hi, what do you mean with multi-threaded ?

Of course a lot processes run in the background, more or less same time.

The official SL client starts several background tasks for rendering a scene and still stays responsible for chatting ...

Maybe i misunderstood your question, but it´s close to weekend so 

Monti

[Steve Mahfouz]

9 hours ago, Monti Messmer said:

Hi, what do you mean with multi-threaded ?

Of course a lot processes run in the background, more or less same time.

The official SL client starts several background tasks for rendering a scene and still stays responsible for chatting ...

Maybe i misunderstood your question, but it´s close to weekend so 

Monti

My understanding per the Firestorm team is that the official viewer is not multi-threaded. If they are incorrect, I am a bit amazed they would be wrong. Please explain more to me. I am not trying to argue with you, just trying to understand. Thanks.

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 hours ago, Steve Mahfouz said:

My understanding per the Firestorm team is that the official viewer is not multi-threaded. If they are incorrect, I am a bit amazed they would be wrong. Please explain more to me. I am not trying to argue with you, just trying to understand. Thanks.

You or the Firestorm team may be confusing "multi-threading" with using more than one processor core at a time.

https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/multi-core-and-multi-threading/

[Steve Mahfouz]

2 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

You or the Firestorm team may be confusing "multi-threading" with using more than one processor core at a time.

https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/multi-core-and-multi-threading/

of course I cannot speak for the Firestorm team, but I am referring to software which uses more than one core at a time.

[Callum Meriman]

I believe this is correct with my long time (many year) discussions with a Dev, and my own dabbling. It's a somewhat naïve view, so I would welcome the more experienced developers, support people and general knowledgeable people to correct me.

More and more has been slowly moving out of the main application thread. Things like chat, media, and asset downloads for example. With all of these the application can keep working and not hang, for example like it used to when a stream was lost. 

It was a very long process to unravel the knots around textures and trim away all that dead wood when HTTP textures can in, then AIS, Media reworking, 64 bit and the new build system (which was crucial).

Also don't forget that due to user created content, SL poses some problems other applications wouldn't have. I guess, lastly, it also often isn't worth the performance hit to split up everything as that needs all the scheduling and yeilding to be handled.

The Lab have been doing ok in this, and they are continuing the work as it's needed.

Edited October 15, 2017 by Callum Meriman

[Monty Linden]

On 10/12/2017 at 1:07 AM, Steve Mahfouz said:

My understanding is that the official SL client is not multi-threaded, except for a texture picker ? Very fuzzy on the details and very open to correction.

Never rely on second-hand information.  If you're using Windows, go grab SysInternals tool suite and poke around with Process Explorer.  (You can also do this with MS Performance Monitor, it's just more annoying.)  Go ahead, I'll wait here....

 

 o    |~~~|
/\_  _|   |
\__`[_    |
][ \,/|___|

 

Okay, you're back.  :-)  What did you see?  Depending on specific build, OS, etc., there are about 20 threads in the viewer.  Some rarely if ever do any work.  The Main thread is generally pinned to the wall eating a full core.  But enter a new area where you need to pull in new content or deal with other dynamic situations and you'll see more activity.  Peak, averaged over human-scale intervals of seconds, can be around 2.5 cores or so.