On Feb 16, 2008 2:45 PM, Matthew Weigel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Marco Peereboom wrote: > > The discussion on kernel threads is irrelevant. It is not about having > > some lower level support that will magically make threads not suck. > > Actually, this is the part of the discussion that interests me. Is threading > a doomed hope on OpenBSD, a model of utilizing multiple cores which the > developers have zero interest supporting? Has the work on libc_r and the like > been abandoned completely?
Firstly, threading is not doomed, stillborn, or even missing on OpenBSD. The pthread implementation works well enough, and many ports make use of it. Due to the focus on security, threaded code in OpenBSD-provided userland is frowned upon in favor of programming techniques that are easier to secure and control. The threading implementation also has some design limitations that prevent it from performing as well as other OSes. That said, the rthreads replacement is still under development, to my knowledge. The goal of rthreads is to overcome these design limitations and be portable to most/all CPU architectures, as well as maintain or improve the current state of security and functionality. If you are interested, google or someone else should be able to supply more details. If someone can split SSH into multiple threads, it should be just as possible to split it into multiple processes. However, I expect that most high-speed SSH traffic is SCP-/SFTP-based and therefore largely I/O bound, so it hasn't been high on anyone's requirements list. --david
