Mplayer using 2 procs?

Robin79 · Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 2:19 am Post subject: Mplayer using 2 procs?

Should mpalyer really be using two processes?
_________________
Gentoo 2005.0
ASUS P5AD2 Deluxe MB
Intel P4 3.2GHz
PCI-E Nvidia Geforce PCX 5750
--------------------

Registered Linux User Nr # 319050 http://counter.li.org

SZwarts · Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 8:16 am Post subject:

I assumed, you mean processors and not processes?

And what exactly is your problem with this? I gues the point of having a dual processor system is to use both of them? Probably mplayer is multi threaded and apperently both threads run on an other proc, but hey that is the idea of more processors, so I consider this something you want.
So what exactly is your question? If you can force one processor to do it all alone, and do something else on your other proc?

tomk · Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 2:34 pm Post subject:

I'm not 100% sure but from what I can tell there is only one process while mplayer is doing it's initial checks, then a second one when the video screen appears. It seems to know what it's doing.
_________________
Search | Read | Answer | Report | Strip

Robin79 · Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 10:53 pm Post subject:

okey then itsd altright then cause i thought it only used on process
_________________
Gentoo 2005.0
ASUS P5AD2 Deluxe MB
Intel P4 3.2GHz
PCI-E Nvidia Geforce PCX 5750
--------------------

Registered Linux User Nr # 319050 http://counter.li.org

lunarg · Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2004 12:22 am Post subject:

It's pretty normal. You don't have to worry about it. If you run XMMS, it also uses more than one process.
_________________
Registered linux user #341804
Visit Black Manticore: http://www.blackmanticore.com/

fafhrd · Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2004 3:05 am Post subject: 2 cents

i don't know the specifics for mplayer or xmms, but, in general, on a linux based system the output of 'ps' is misleading, because the threading model is implemented as "kernel processes" ... or at least the thread manager is ...

however, from my experience, you never have only two seeming processes if the app is multi-threaded...this is because 1 thread is the first/main thread, the 2nd is the "thread manager", and the 3rd is the first thread you tried to create from the program (making it your 2nd thread)

Yeah...the "model" is okay on linux ... it's the sticky points of the threads being implemented as processes that classically sucked (i'm sure nptl or whatever is 100x better) ... things like: well, what happens if a signal is sent to the process? in terms of the model, the "process" is the ONE process, however, being the threads do have PIDs because of how they are implemented, suddenly one of the threads could die as a process dies from a signal, and the others know nothing of it (because pthread_kill or whatev wasn't used)

what? mask all maskable signals you say? nope ... the thread manager uses signals to talk to the thread-processes...

*sigh*

system programming on linux (and solaris) for a full 18 month project gave me my only reasons to dislike linux in the least...which is sad, 'cause it rocks me....
_________________
jñanam bandha