Win7 and multi CPUs

[Ed Cryer]

As I understand it Win7 can handle these quite well, BUT it depends on
the program itself whether more than one is actually used.
I guess most apps just trundle along using one; and for most of the time
only one will be used, single-threading.

Does anybody have a list of the commonly used apps which actually use
more than one. Especially for a 64-bit Win7.

Ed

 

[The Other Guy]

As I understand it Win7 can handle these quite well, BUT it depends on
the program itself whether more than one is actually used.
I guess most apps just trundle along using one; and for most of the time
only one will be used, single-threading.

Does anybody have a list of the commonly used apps which actually use
more than one. Especially for a 64-bit Win7.

7zip definitely benefits from multiple cores, AND 64 bit Windows.






To reply by email, lose the Ks...

 

[JJ]

As I understand it Win7 can handle these quite well, BUT it depends on
the program itself whether more than one is actually used.
I guess most apps just trundle along using one; and for most of the time
only one will be used, single-threading.

Does anybody have a list of the commonly used apps which actually use
more than one. Especially for a 64-bit Win7.

VirtualBox, VMWare, Virtual PC, DOSBox, and other virtualization/emulation
programs. These are heavily multi threaded.

7-Zip, WinRAR, and some other archivers. Compression and decompression can
use multiple threads.

Media Player Classic Home Cinema, VLC, and some other video players. For the
video decoding process. Audio decoding and the rendering processes are
usually run in separate threads. This also applies for audio players.

Almost all programs nowadays can utilize at least 2 threads. One for the
GUI, and one for the main function. But the GUI thread simply waits for
input events most of the time.

And games! Of course.

 

[Paul]

As I understand it Win7 can handle these quite well, BUT it depends on
the program itself whether more than one is actually used.
I guess most apps just trundle along using one; and for most of the time
only one will be used, single-threading.

Does anybody have a list of the commonly used apps which actually use
more than one. Especially for a 64-bit Win7.

Ed

The oldest is probably Photoshop.

Photoshop was multicore for so long, it even worked
with special DSP accelerator cards (ones running at 50MHz).
Just to give you some idea how long they've been doing it.

Photoshop filters are split in two groups. Half of the
filters are single threaded. Adobe claims to have done
this for some of those, to give the best mathematical
precision. They used algorithms that emphasized correctness
over speed.

The other filters, use divide and conquer. Half the image
runs on one core, half on the other, for double the speed.
That's the basic idea on those filters.

Consequently, if you're "benching" Photoshop, you have to be
very careful as to what filters you use for the job. One of
the older benchmarks, recorded individual filter results,
making it easier to see precisely which filters were benefiting
from the extra cores.

7ZIP is a weird mixture. Some of the 7ZIP compressors are
single threaded. And some are multithreaded. While you can
get a separate compressor "PIGZ" that does GZIP compression
in parallel, the author of 7ZIP doesn't seem to be interested
in incorporating that innovation into his own code. The GZIP
compressor in 7ZIP, is single-threaded.

Paul

 

[Jason]

As I understand it Win7 can handle these quite well, BUT it depends on
the program itself whether more than one is actually used.
I guess most apps just trundle along using one; and for most of the time
only one will be used, single-threading.

Does anybody have a list of the commonly used apps which actually use
more than one. Especially for a 64-bit Win7.

Ed

The oldest is probably Photoshop.

Photoshop was multicore for so long, it even worked
with special DSP accelerator cards (ones running at 50MHz).
Just to give you some idea how long they've been doing it.

Photoshop filters are split in two groups. Half of the
filters are single threaded. Adobe claims to have done
this for some of those, to give the best mathematical
precision. They used algorithms that emphasized correctness
over speed.

The other filters, use divide and conquer. Half the image
runs on one core, half on the other, for double the speed.
That's the basic idea on those filters.

Consequently, if you're "benching" Photoshop, you have to be
very careful as to what filters you use for the job. One of
the older benchmarks, recorded individual filter results,
making it easier to see precisely which filters were benefiting
from the extra cores.

7ZIP is a weird mixture. Some of the 7ZIP compressors are
single threaded. And some are multithreaded. While you can
get a separate compressor "PIGZ" that does GZIP compression
in parallel, the author of 7ZIP doesn't seem to be interested
in incorporating that innovation into his own code. The GZIP
compressor in 7ZIP, is single-threaded.

Paul[/QUOTE]

Adobe Audition now takes advantage of multiple cores. The standalone
version of Monkey's Audio (compression) uses > 1 core. I is now built in
to Audition and I presume it does the same.