Hi,

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Stephen C. Nill wrote:

> I'm running LISTSERV and LSMTP on a Win2k server (with dual processors, if
> that means anything, though of course LISTSERV doesn't directly utilize
> both processors).  At the risk of displaying my ignorance, what is
> "processor affinity"?  I've never heard of it, and there is no reference to
> it in my references.

It's the ability to control which processor(s) in a multiprocessor
environment a given process runs on. e.g. "Run the payroll process on
processor 0, everything else on processors 1,2 and 3)". It allows you
to dedicate individual processors (or groups of processors) to
particular processes. How you identify a particular process can vary.
I don't use win2k, and I don't know if you can set processor affinity
under win2k.

I first came across the terminology in an IBM mainframe environment.
Under Tru64 UNIX you can use the runon (1) command to run a command
on a specific CPU or processor set. I've seen similar capability in
other UNIX like OS's.
                           Fergal.


--
Fergal Suipeil,
Systems Programmer,
Computing Services,
University College Dublin,
Ireland.