[erlang-questions] Thread creation benchmark

[Xiao Jia]

Hi,

I just wrote a program trying to see the time cost of thread creation
in Erlang. Here "thread" means "Erlang process" actually. 

My code and plotted result are here: https://gist.github.com/4499544

The idea is to create M x N threads, and measure the time cost for
every N threads created. After a thread is created, it sends a message
to let the main process continue, and finishes execution.

I wonder if this is the right way to do this. Also it seems that
Erlang behaves in some pattern periodically according to the figure.
Any hint about why?

Thanks,
Xiao Jia