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0 pointspacketlost1y ago0 comments

Web servers are notoriously easy to implement with message passing / fork. Threading is a particularly bad model for that case.

Games on the other hand? Oh yeah, you definitely need threads for that.

It's important to note that "multithreading" specifically means shared-memory model of parallel processing. Games are more of an exception than the rule when it comes to being well suited to shared memory.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

andy241y ago· 2 in thread

Isn’t Nginx multithreaded rather than multiprocess? I’m not an expert in web stuff but it’s always felt intuitively that worker threads map nocely into typical web server workloads.

Also, any UI app should basically be multithreaded to prevent interface hiccups.

packetlostOP1y ago

No, nginx uses a fixed number of worker processes and communicates primarily through explicit shared memory and message passing.

Threading works ok, but there's rarely much shared state so the fork and pipe / she model wins cleaner and more secure.

As for UIs: maybe! I'm sure it depends, but this isn't an area I know a ton about

andy241y ago

Interesting perspective, I’ve never been thinking about this problem in terms of whether workers need shared memory space. Thank you!

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