Parallel

Allow to run command with different parameters simultaneously on CPU available

Require parallel package

Quick view

Run echo and sleep under 4 cores

parallel -j4 sleep {}\; echo {} ::: 2 1 4 3

Semaphore

In case you do not want to run your command as one, it is possible to use semaphore

sem # equivalent to parallel --semaphore

sem --jobs 2 --id id-for-sleep 'sleep 10s; echo "10s done"' # semaphore cannot benefit from :::
sem --jobs 2 --id id-for-sleep sleep 5s\; echo "5s done"
sem --wait --id id-for-sleep; echo "done" # wait all semaphore (commands) are done

Note:

• All options present in parallel are not necessarily guaranteed to work under sem, such as --joblog will be overwrite by each command from sem
• --id ensure your working under the same semaphore (namespace)
• --jobs need to be specified each time

Go further

See man parallel which got many examples