Hi, I asked the same question here, but got no response. I tested drawing to the same surface by multiple threads. I used ImageSurface and the result was promising. I could reduce the total drawing time by factor of almost 2 in my dual core processor. When you have multiple threads with their own cairo context, you can do high-level graphics operations such as tessellation in parallel, so you can get performance boost regardless of the underlying surface. However, I am not sure this approach is thread-safe across various cairo back-ends. What is the plan to optimize cairo with the advent of multi-core processors? Creating multiple cairo contexts with multiple threads to the same surface is the right approach? Regards, Kwang Yul Seo <div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 8:40 AM, Augusto Radtke <<a href="mailto:radtke@radtke.com.br">radtke@radtke.com.br</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Hello! I couldn't found this answer in the usual places, so maybe someone here can. It's possible to draw to the same surface by multiple threads? I mean creating two contexts, one with each thread and clip it to different regions of the surface and draw in parallel? The idea is to reduce the total drawing time but I feel this feature could be backend-specific and for some backend won't be really useful at all. Am I right? Thank you, Augusto _______________________________________________ cairo mailing list <a href="mailto:cairo@cairographics.org">cairo@cairographics.org</a> <a href="http://lists.cairographics.org/mailman/listinfo/cairo" target="_blank">http://lists.cairographics.org/mailman/listinfo/cairo</a> </blockquote></div>