POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.programming : the possibility of POSIX compliant threads ? : Re: the possibility of POSIX compliant threads ? Server Time
5 Jul 2024 15:19:18 EDT (-0400)
  Re: the possibility of POSIX compliant threads ?  
From: Wolfgang Wieser
Date: 23 Apr 2003 13:40:36
Message: <3ea6d013@news.povray.org>
Dennis Clarke wrote:
> [...]
> is there a possibility of
>  a future POV-Ray release that has some multi-threading?  Possibly with a
>  POSIX approach as opposed to something dependant upon Linux or Microsoft?
> 
Hmm... I have a crazy idea: If you need it, try and implement it. 

Using UNIX, the easiest way is probably a post-fork after parsing. 
Advantage: POVRay is not thread-save but as you use fork(), you get 
cloned separate processes. Use pipes between the tasks and change 
render.cpp (IMHO) so that each task only renders assigned image lines. 
Use backwards pipes to have the image data sent back. 

Time requirement: a day... or two. 

Won't support radiosity and photons will be done by master only, 
you may get trouble with continued tracing but if you just need more 
speed quickly...

It you are creating an animation, renderin frames in parallel instead 
of each frame in parallel is probably a better approach (less overhead). 
(RendView (<- ask freshmeat or google) can do that using UNIX/Linux.)

Cheers,
Wolfgang


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