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From: Jeremy Sanders <jeremy@jeremysanders.net>
Subject: Re: Multiple scripts versus single multi-threaded script
Date: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 10:02:42 +0200
References: <f01b2e7a-9fc7-4138-bb6e-447d31179f2d@googlegroups.com> <roy-451497.12415103102013@news.panix.com>
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Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:55455

Roy Smith wrote:

> Threads are lighter-weight.  That means it's faster to start a new
> thread (compared to starting a new process), and a thread consumes fewer
> system resources than a process.  If you have lots of short-lived tasks
> to run, this can be significant.  If each task will run for a long time
> and do a lot of computation, the cost of startup becomes less of an
> issue because it's amortized over the longer run time.

This might be true on Windows, but I think on Linux process overheads are 
pretty similar to threads, e.g.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/807506/threads-vs-processes-in-linux

Combined with the lack of a GIL-conflict, processes can be pretty efficient.

Jeremy