it probably predates the multiprocessing package (introduced in 2.6, october 2008, although available 3rd party before that) and certainly doesn't mention it.

multiprocessing does use multiple cores, but is a heavyweight solution (separate, communicating processes, wrapped in a thread-like api). if you need multiple threads for cpu-related performance, it can be very useful.

python 2.6+, including 3.

http://toastdriven.com/blog/2008/nov/11/brief-introduction-m...

http://docs.python.org/2/library/multiprocessing.html