"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> "Clarence1898" <dle### [at] comcastnet> wrote:
> > "Maetes" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> >
> > Still I would like to know how everyone does their rendering.
>
> [running Windows 10]
>
> Hi!
>
> I have been rendering POV-ray animations for many years, all the way back to
> Windows 98 days, when machines had only single cores. Now I have a Corei7
> machine with 8 cores/16 threads. (Quite an improvement, ha.)
>
> To be honest, I was not even aware that multiple instances of the app could be
> run *successfully*...that is, with an overall speed improvement for a scene or
> an animation...since it has always been my understanding that even a single
> instance of POV-ray uses most of the resources of the entire machine for
> rendering. At least, that's the way it used to be on my various single-core
> machines through the years. (And AFAIU, initially *parsing* a scene uses only
> one thread, regardless of how many threads are available.)
>
> But the faster results of your multi-instance use are a real surprise! I will
> have to give that a try, to see what the speed improvement might be for my own
> animations.
>
> There remains a question, though: When running multiple instances of the app on
> multi core/multi thread machines, does each instance's scene parsing use it's
> *own* single thread to do so? I.e., with 3 instances running (for example), are
> there now 3 threads dedicated to parsing the (3) scenes? Or just one thread as
> is typical-- split up between the 3 instances?

When I started using multiprocessors I noticed the performance advantage of
multiple instances, but it was on a much smaller scale.  It was only with more
and faster processors that it became noticeable.  With my first quad-core system
the difference was about 15% improvement.  With a 20 cpu i9 the difference is up
to 60%.  For more complex scenes the smaller the difference, but still
noticeable.

As I understand it, each instance is completely independent from the others.
Each instance will have its own threads.

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