[AG-DEV] why is CPU Affinity restricted to the first processor?

[Ed Brannin]

Hello,

I'm running a Dell "Pentium(R) D 3.46GHz" system with...  well, I'm not sure
if it has multiple CPUs or just Hyperthreading, but the Task Manager shows 4
CPU usage graphs.

Last week, we had some trouble with dropped packets -- and as it turned out,
it was partly because all the AG-related processes were starving each other
on CPU #0.  Manually enabling the CPU affinity to use all CPUs for each
pythonw, dvts, vlc, vic, etc. process brought that problem under control, so
I'm wondering: why does AG restrict itself to one CPU under win32?

I see this happens in AccessGrid/Platform/win32/Config.py:555-572, and was
added by Tom Uram in January 2006 -- but I haven't been able to find any
discussion of why with Google, the mailing list search or Bugzilla.

Would it be possible to spread processes across each CPU, or even leave them
with the default CPU affinity?

-Ed Brannin
edbrannin at gmail.com
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