We hear a lot about dual core and quad core devices. How do we program so that these cores are being used effectively? On a PC (or a parallel computer), you need to use systems like MPI (Message Passing Interface) with specific calls so that processors talk to each other. If you don't, the program just runs on one core. But when it comes to mobile devices no-one seems to talk about parallelization as a programming task. Does that mean iPads and Android devices automatically balance work across the cores?
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As far as I know there is nothing in Android and Ojbective-C that would allow parallel prgoramming, thus if there is no built in parallelization, for example, dual core Ipad's one core is completely useless
Not sure how easy this would be to access via lua - maybe co-routines could be the start of it. I wonder if it would be possible to create and trigger a process running in another thread under HotWax?
#MakeABetterGame! "Never give up, Never NEVER give up!" - Winston Churchill
http://blog.slaunchaman.com/2011/03/03/ios-programming-for-multicore-processors/
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Performance/Reference/GCD_libdispatch_Ref/Reference/reference.html
There is a similar facility in Android, I think.
I get the impression that most developers are not bothering with multi cores because its too complicated and highly OS specific:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57410518-94/7-myths-about-quad-core-phones-smartphones-unlocked/
So all the hype about "dual core this" and "quad core that" may be exaggerated. I guess if two apps are running, the OS can put them on different cores which gives a benefit of sorts. But actual code parallelisation doesn't seem to be common in the mobile apps world...
https://github.com/gideros/gideros
https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnBlackburn1975
#MakeABetterGame! "Never give up, Never NEVER give up!" - Winston Churchill