[ale] Processor usage

[jdp at algoloma.com (JD)]

Write multithreaded code and more CPUs will be used automatically. No way to
force a single-threaded app to use more than 1 core. Can't be done.  If a job,
like C/C++ compiles can be split up, then more cores will be used too. Normally,
passing the -j2 option into gmake will handle that. I'd think that java compiles
would work the same way, but unless you can run multiple instances safely of a
single-threaded application, there really isn't any hope of using more CPU.

Video encoders have been multi-threaded for years. That is all that you were seeing.


On 02/27/2014 04:49 PM, Adrya Stembridge wrote:
> A colleague and I were looking at some ontology data yesterday using java via
> command line.  I noticed that CPU utilization averaged 99% on a system with 24
> cores.  The data processing is intense and time consuming.  We're wondering if
> this could be sped up by forcing the machine to use more CPU resources.    In
> the past, I've seen utilization reach around 1500% while encoding video.  
> 
> Is it possible (or safe) to instruct or force java to use more cores in
> processing our data, or am I looking at this the wrong way? 
>