Application multithreading

[x010]

1 - Is it possible for applications under Windows 95 (and other DOS-based Windows OS's) to support explicit multithreading? I know that they support multi-processing under a single CPU , but do they allow applications to multi-thread to separate cores like today?
2 - Is there any provision for DOS itself to multithread in any way? What comes in my mind is TSR's...
3 - Is there any option for a program created in 16-bit(eg:- Turbo C++) to multithread in any way?

Thanks!

[merlix]

Windows 9x kernel doesnt have a concept of SMP/APIC, so it cannot support multi core threading. An application can spin off multiple threads, but only one thread is actually doing something at a time.

DOS was not designed to be multi core threaded either. A program that has information on how APIC works could launch a process itself which managed threads and have those threads run on other cores, but the DOS kernel would only ever run on the first core. I know of some diagnostic utilities that run under DOS that will do some verification against a second CPU, (my IBM e-server does this, sadly I havent been able to dump the diagnostic disk as its on ROM). I dont know of anything outside of that though.

Unless the program was designed with the concept of threads in mind there is no way to explicitly make the application threaded. Now if you want to run several DOS programs at once there are a plethora of ways to do it DOSShell, Windows, DESQView, DR Concurrent DOS etc.. But the way each of these work is suspending an application to run the next application.

[RentedMule]

Win9x supported preemptive multithreading just fine.

3d studio max had a version that could use SMP in Win9x, but it took it upon itself to use any CPU past 0. The OS itself was completely unaware.