My interest is in critical sections in the Perl interpreter itself.
I was asked by a friend, why after starting 150 web spider threads, his system would bog down until it seem to stop, but was still running?

I proposed that each of those threads was a separate process, with each having a full Perl interpreter. But they were all sharing the same .so libraries, and the number of critical sections(CS) that the interpreter had to go through would create single file bottle-neck after bottle-neck.

Are there CS in the interpreter? Are there certain functional areas that have significantly more CS than others

It is always better to have seen your target for yourself, rather than depend upon someone else's description.

In reply to Critical sections; In the Perl interpreter by Wiggins

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