Thanks to multithreading, Mintec now offers dramatically faster kriging capabilities in its MineSight suite of software. The interpolation functions in MineSight Basis (MSBasis) are a key part of its ability to build and manage 3D block, stratigraphic, and gridded surface models. Multithreading allows MSBasis’ kriging program to operate three to eight times faster than earlier versions on a PC with four processors.“It scales almost linearly with a number of processors – so on a computer with eight CPUs, it should run five to 15 times faster,” said Mintec President John Davies.

Multithreading breaks down an algorithm into separate calculations that do not depend on one another. These calculations can then be run simultaneously across multiple processors to speed up the calculation. Multithreading was adopted earlier this year in MineSight Economic Planner (MSEP). Combined with 64-bit technology, the multithreaded version of MSEP can handle complex calculations nearly 70 times faster than its predecessor.