Running multiple VM on one image

Stephen Pair spair at advantive.com
Mon Dec 13 19:07:01 UTC 1999


> Hi,
> in our project solution we need to run multiple VM (like native OS
> processes) on one image. We consider division of an  image to several
> (virtual) object spaces, so there would be almost no overlap
> (concurrency) between them. We are interested if there's a possibility
> to do this in Squeak.If yes on which platforms and whether  it implies
> same significant changes to VM.
>
> martin.

Having experience in attempting this in another dialect, and hearing other
experiences, my opinion is that one should aviod it.  But, rather I would do
something like Bob suggests (or something a little tighter than sockets).
The ultimate goal would be to have multiple VMs (one per processor), each
with an ObjectMemory that can communicate with the other(s).  A nice load
balancer that could shift object closer to the objects that use them would
also be nice.

One could use the replicator and forwarder approach, but a nicely reified
object reference scheme would make things much cleaner.

- Stephen





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