Trivial question

[Tyr-7BE]

Alright...out of curiosity: While running the SETI@Home client, the readme says that it's possible to have multiple instances of it on multi-processor systems and cpu's that share a filesystem, provided that the executables are in different directories. Is it possible to have multiple instances running on a single-processor machine? I'm running an AMD 800 Athlon, so SETI@Home takes up very little CPU, and running 2 or 3 would be no inconvenience at all. I can run 3 separate SETI@Home clients, and ps -A shows all three running. Each one downloads a data file separately. I'm just wondering whether they're taking turns with CPU usage, or are they all sucking away at this mofo's power simultaneously. If anyone cares to answer, thanks :)

[bigrigdriver]

You give no indication of what kind of system (operating system, that is) you are running. So, lets assume some version of Linux, which is a true multi-tasking OS. It should be possible to run Seti@home in separate windows of the Desktop pager. It may be necessary to follow the instructions for multi-processor operation in order to get it to work, since opening more than one window in different desktop pages will only call on the one instance of the program (and the information you have downloaded). So, set up as many directories as you need, download the information for each instance you want to run in its own directory, and run each in its own window.
As for the difference between single and multiple processor machines, in the single processor machine, think in terms of clock cycles: one instruction excetuted per cycle, for each process which is running. Therefore, if you have several processes running at one time, the single processor will process one instruction per cycle, per process. A fast processor is a definite must. The end result: the more processes you have running; the slower the execution of instructions.

[ 04 March 2001: Message edited by: bigrigdriver ]

[ 04 March 2001: Message edited by: bigrigdriver ]

[Tyr-7BE]

Thanks...and I am running linux...a big mess of Debian. This IS a linux board after all :)