We're talking about the multiprocessing package/modules in Python: http://docs.python.org/library/multiprocessing.html http://docs.python.org/library/multiproc

We're talking about the multiprocessing package/modules in Python: http://docs.python.org/library/multiprocessing.html http://docs.python.org/library/multiprocessing.html It uses fork under the covers, so small worker processes aren't an option for that module (unless we forego interpreter embedding entirely which isn't the point). There are other techniques for spawning processes to do some external process work, but those, of course, need entirely separate plumbing.