Re: So, Poll is not scalable... what to do?

[kirk bae]

> Kirk Bae wrote:
> > If poll is not scalable, which method should I use when writing 
> > multithreaded socket server?
>
> People who write multithreaded servers tend to use thread pools
> and never need to use poll().  (Well, ok, I've written multithreaded
> servers that used poll(), but the threads were there for disk I/O,
> not networking.)

By thread pool, do you mean, one thread per socket?, or a work-crew model 
where a specified number of threads handle many sockets?


> > What is the most efficient model to use?
> >
> > Is there a "standard" model to use when writing a scalable multithreaded 
> > socket serve such as "io completion ports" on windows?
>
> Depends on your definition of efficient.
>
> If by 'efficient' you mean 'runs like a bat out of hell,
> and I don't care how long it takes to write', and
> you're willing to write all the code from scratch, and
> you're handy with state machines, the right way to go is
> an edge-triggered readiness notification method (sys_epoll or kqueue,
> if available, else sigio).

My definition of "efficient" is a method that is most widely used or 
accepted for writing a robust scalable server. So I guess, "'runs like a bat 
out of hell, and I don't care how long it takes to write'" is close.

Would it be thread pool or epoll? Is it uncommon to mix these two?

Currently, I have a thread-1 calling poll, and dispatching its workload to 
thread-2 and thread-3 in blocking sockets. I dispatch the workload to worker 
threads because some of the operations take considerable time.

Is mixing threads with poll uncommon? Is this a bad design? any comments 
would be appreciated.

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