SWI-Prolog multithreading is based on standard C language 
multithreading support. It is not like ParLog or other parallel 
implementations of the Prolog language. Prolog threads have their own 
stacks and only share the Prolog heap: predicates, records, 
flags and other global non-backtrackable data. SWI-Prolog thread support 
is designed with the following goals in mind.
- Multithreaded server applications
 Today's computing services often focus on (internet) server 
applications. Such applications often have need for communication 
between services and/or fast non-blocking service to multiple concurrent 
clients. The shared heap provides fast communication, and thread 
creation is relatively cheap.148On 
an Intel i7-2600K, running Ubuntu Linux 12.04, SWI-Prolog 6.2 creates 
and joins 32,000 threads per second elapsed time.
 
- Interactive applications
 Interactive applications often need to perform extensive computation. If 
such computations are executed in a new thread, the main thread can 
process events and allow the user to cancel the ongoing computation. 
User interfaces can also use multiple threads, each thread dealing with 
input from a distinct group of windows. See also section 
9.7.
 
- Natural integration with foreign code
 Each Prolog thread runs in a native thread of the operating system, 
automatically making them cooperate with MT-safe foreign code. 
In addition, any foreign thread can create its own Prolog engine for 
dealing with calling Prolog from C code.
SWI-Prolog multithreading is based on the POSIX thread standard
Butenhof, 
1997 used on most popular systems except for MS-Windows. On 
Windows it uses the
pthread-win32 
emulation of POSIX threads mixed with the Windows native API for 
smoother and faster operation. The SWI-Prolog thread implementation has 
been discussed in the ISO WG17 working group and is largely addopted by 
YAP and XSB Prolog.149The latest 
version of the ISO draft can be found at http://logtalk.org/plstd/threads.pdf. 
It appears to have dropped from the ISO WG17 agenda.
Section Index