Force app to use single CPU

[Blake Carlson <blake-carlson uiowa edu>]

Hello all -

I have an imaging app (uses ~500MB of memory) running on my DP264
(Linux 2.2.10) that seems to spend a lot of time context switching between
the processors (judging from xosview).  If I change the priority of the
app, I can get it to stick on one processor longer before context
switching out (no big surprise there).

Would I see a _significant_ difference in performance if I was able to
force the app to stick to one CPU all of the time (forcing all other
processes to run on the second processor)?  Could I get two copies of the
program running at the same time to stick to a single CPU and not context
switch? (runtime for the program is about 1 hour)

What is the best way to do this.  'nice -20 app' as root? 


Thanks for your help -

Blake Carlson
blake-carlson@uiowa.edu
College of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of Iowa