It seems that there is a general assumption that threads will remain  
the unit of computational parallelism.  After attending Apple's WWDC  
and seeing some of the stuff in Snow Leopard, I don't believe this  
assumption is correct.

Simply saying smalltalk threads must map to system threads is short  
sighted I think.  There are new models in the pipe that bear looking at.

"Snow Leopard delivers unrivaled support for multi-core processors  
with a new technology code-named “Grand Central,” making it easy for  
developers to create programs that take full advantage of the power of  
multi-core Macs. Snow Leopard further extends support for modern  
hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which lets any  
application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power  
previously available only to graphics applications. OpenCL is based on  
the C programming language and has been proposed as an open standard."

Apple press release.  The unit of computation is not pthreads.  There  
is recognition that threads only get you so far and it is looking like  
it isn't far enough.

I think there's a major game change afoot and it is too early to make  
bets.

On Jul 6, 2008, at 8:45 PM, Peter William Lount wrote:

> If the Smalltalk/Squeak/Commercial community doesn't want to move  
> forward to take maximal general purpose advantage of the multi-core  
> cpus that would be a big disappointment indeed. The other languages  
> will leave Smalltalk in their dust. That is what clients are telling  
> me and I happen to agree with them.
>
> I ask the Squeak Smalltalk (and Commerical Smalltalk) virtual  
> machine developers and communities to please reconsider the general  
> purpose many native threads per image solution for the next versions  
> of your virtual machines.
>
> I think it's best to let each developer-user choose how many native  
> threads per image and how many images are loaded and which images  
> are loaded. After all it's their program. Isn't our job as language  
> and systems designers to provide them with the tools that they need  
> to build the systems that they want to build? I think so. What do  
> you think?

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