2019.1

Number of Merge engines
When first installed, PrintShop Mail Connect is configured to use 1 Merge engine. A Merge
engine will run mostly single-threaded. To benefit from modern multi-core systems it is
recommended that several Merge engines run in parallel.
As a rule of thumb, you will want to run as many Merge engines as the system has cores. The
print statistics message dialog shows both the number of Merge engines and cores. However,
modern hardware typically has both full cores and hyper-threading or logical cores. Both are
counted as cores in this dialog, but the logical cores should not be counted as a full core when
determining how many Merge engines to use. As a guide, count logical cores for only 25%-50%
of a full core.
For example: on an Intel i7 CPU that comes with 4 cores and 4 additional hyper-threading
cores, Windows Task Manager will show 4 cores and 8 logical processors on its performance
tab. On a CPU like this, 5 or 6 Merge engines can be configured to run in parallel.
It is advised that you do not configure more engines than can be backed by actual processing
power . This adds overhead while not adding processing power.
To configure the number of Merge engines:
1.
Select Window > Preferences... from the menu; under Scheduling, select Scheduling -
Merge engine.
2.
Set Local engines launched to a number appropriate for your system.
3.
Initially, you can set Parallel engines per job to the same number as the Local engines
launched, for both medium and large jobs (see "Job size limits" on the facing page,
below).
4.
Always set Maximum concurrent engines per type to the same number as the Local
engines launched, for both medium and large jobs.
5.
Click OK or Apply.
Note
Since PrintShopMail Connect can only handle one job at a time, it isn't useful to make any 'engine
reservations'. Reserved engines cannot be used by jobs of another type. All Merge engines should
be "floating".
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