HELP! * GREY=local LOCAL HTML version of Foils prepared July 6,1995

Foil 59 Multithreading for Interpreted Environments -- 3: Multithreading for HTTP Servers and Clients

From Master Foils for Threads with TCE in detail CPS600 Spring Semester95 -- April 1995. by Janusz Niemiec and Geoffrey Fox * See also color IMAGE
A very practical example of an interpreted system, which can benefit from multithreaded communication model are the HTTP servers and clients.
A WWW server interprets the HTTP protocol while responding to clients' requests.
  • Currently, every time a new client connects to a server, the server "forks" itself, creating a new copy of the server which now handles the established connection exclusively. Forking a new process is an expensive operation. In addition memory and other system resources are being wasted.
  • An alternative solution is to have a multithreaded server, which will create a new thread each time a new connection is requested. This is not only more efficient if terms of performance and memory consumption, but allows to implement easily interactions between different client. Something, which is a natural next step in the Web technologies.

Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, Syracuse University, npac@npac.syr.edu

If you have any comments about this server, send e-mail to webmaster@npac.syr.edu.

Page produced by wwwfoil on Tue Feb 18 1997