Hi,

Can anyone tell me whether Informix 5.10 will benefit (or be able to use)
multiple CPU's.
I can't seem to find a Multiprocessor parameter for tbconfig.

Thanks in Advance,

Henry

henryg wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Can anyone tell me whether Informix 5.10 will benefit (or be able to use)
> multiple CPU's.
> I can't seem to find a Multiprocessor parameter for tbconfig.

Informix OnLine (OL 4.xx, & 5.xx) is single threaded. The only parallel
processing it is capable of is parallel sorting if the PSORT_NPROCS and
PSORT_DBTEMP environment variables are set then index builds and larger
ORDER BY clauses will be broken into $PSORT_NPROCS streams of data and an
sqlturbo process will be started to sort each stream. Then primary sqlturbo
then merges the sorted streams that result and return the data to you.

However, each sqlturbo process is single threaded and except for parallel
sorting each connection gets only one sqlturbo process. For true parallel
query and multithreading you have to upgrade to Informix Dynamic Server (IDS
7.xx, 9.xx, 10.xx).

Art S. Kagel

Way back in the mists of time (well, OK, last month), Art S. Kagel wrote:
> henryg wrote:
>> Can anyone tell me whether Informix 5.10 will benefit (or be able to use)
>> multiple CPU's.
>> I can't seem to find a Multiprocessor parameter for tbconfig.
>
> Informix OnLine (OL 4.xx, & 5.xx) is single threaded. The only parallel
> processing it is capable of is parallel sorting if the PSORT_NPROCS and
> PSORT_DBTEMP environment variables are set then index builds and larger
> ORDER BY clauses will be broken into $PSORT_NPROCS streams of data and
> an sqlturbo process will be started to sort each stream. Then primary
> sqlturbo then merges the sorted streams that result and return the data
> to you.
>
> However, each sqlturbo process is single threaded and except for
> parallel sorting each connection gets only one sqlturbo process. For
> true parallel query and multithreading you have to upgrade to Informix
> Dynamic Server (IDS 7.xx, 9.xx, 10.xx).

Of course, OnLine 5.10 can use multiple CPUs - but each separate session
is going to get its own sqlturbo process, and each such process can be
run in parallel on a multi-CPU machine, so if you have (many) concurrent
users, OnLine 5.10 will make use of multiple CPUs. However, as Art
indicates, except for the rather specialized cases, a single session
will not benefit from multiple CPUs.

--
Jonathan Leffler #include <disclaimer.h>
Email: jleffler@earthlink.net, jleffler@us.ibm.com
Guardian of DBD::Informix v2005.02 -- http://dbi.perl.org/