I think that the right model (my
stack/priQueue/pool intuition?) will change a Herculean
task into a fairly straightfoward task and achievable.
Change the problem, to get better answers.
This has been well thought through and discussed. The
definition above is very useful. It provides a system that
can inter operate with concurrent code without having to
implement a system that provides parallelism. It is used in
David Simmons' VMs for S# etc and a similar (but less
performant) scheme is available in Python VMs.
Please, let's get this scheme working first. I'm not at
all happy (read, extremely unhappy) that there is not much
focus on working together to get our current VM to an
excellent state and instead lots of work on other VMs that is
speculative and a long way away from being production ready.
We have a huge amount of work to do on Cog:
- event-driven VM (that hence costs 0% processor time at
idle)
- 64-bits (x64 and ARM and...?)
- Sista adaptive optimizer
- FFI via dynamic generation of marshaling code, as
required for efficient and correct call outs on x64
-
MTVM as defined above
-
an incremental global mark-sweep GC for Spur
- running on Xen/Unikernels/containers
- providing a JavaScript plugin to proved rendering and
events so we can run an efficient VM in a web browser
- a port of the Interpreter/Context VM to Spur
IMO, things that can /and should/ wait are
- throwing away Slang and providing a true
written-in-pure-Smalltalk VM that is self-bootstrapped a la
Gerardo Richarte and Xavier Burroni
- a truly parallel multi/threaded VM
and things we shouldn't go anywhere near are
- using libffi
- targeting JavaScript, Java or any other dynamic language
de jour that happens to run in a web browser but either
provides abysmal performance or doesn't support full Smalltalk
semantics
- implementing the VM in other VM frameworks such as PyPy
which simply strengthens that community and weakens our own
Right now there are only a handful of people who make
commits to the VM and three who are "full time", and we're all
overloaded. But the VM is the base of the pillar and if we
want to provide high-quality solutions that people will pay
money to use we have to have a high-quality VM. In Spur we
have a VM that is significantly faster that VW, and very
reliable. In Sista we will have a system that is much faster
and can be improved upon for years to come and a system that
can migrate to future VMs (because it is mostly Smalltalk),
and useful support for a high quality FFI. People like have
stepped up and made significant contributions to give us what
is a respectable VM that is on an arc to providing a really
high-quality production Smalltalk VM written in Smalltalk
produced by a very small community. But it is now 2015 and
Cog started 7 years ago. All the work on other VMs, deployment
platforms etc, IMO dilutes and delays in delivering to our
community a truly world-class VM that we can compete with
against Java HotSpot, node.js v8, lua luajit, factor, swift et
al. Please get on board. We'd love the help and we can
guarantee you'll have fun and you can guarantee you'll have an
impact.
I appreciate you and this MT discussion.
Said that:
- What is in plans is
MT-FFI, and that will be available eventually.
- There is an approach I
want to re-work, that would allow us profit of
multicores without going multithread: the “hydra”
experiment made some years ago by Igor creates a good
basis to this. But is also a lot of of work (but a lot
less than a complete MT), and not a real priority for
now… I hope to resume work on that area some day… just
not anytime soon.
Yes, please. I recall those discussions. Hydra is
cosmological.
Regards,
Robert
Esteban
On 18 Oct 2015, at 17:56,
Ben Coman <btc@openInWorld.com>
wrote:
On Sat, Oct 17, 2015 at
2:25 AM, Robert Withers
<robert.w.withers@gmail.com>
wrote:
Yes, exactly. I do
realize I was consciously changing that effort
synchronization order.
I see 64-bit being higher
priority than multi-threaded for the wider
community. Dealing with
larger in-Image data opens the door to more
corporate project/funding
opportunities. Also simplifying the install
on modern Linux platforms
without requiring additional 386 libraries
will help acceptance
there.
It is my humble opinion,
without really knowing, that 64-bit would have to
be redone after the MTVM completes.
I would assume it was the
other way around. Presuming that Eliot has
sponsors influencing his
priorities, it seems given that 64-bits will
happen first. I would
guess any MTVM development on the old vm would
then need to be reworked.
I was doing so with the
idea in mind that I and others
might dig into working
on the VM, for threading support, while Eliot
maintains focus on
64-bits...a tall order, I know.
The usual downside of
splitting resources applies. There are not that
many "others" and maybe
they would be drawn away from helping with the
64-bit vm. If the 64-bit
vm goes slower for lack of resources then
your footing for MTVM will
shifting for a longer time. You may
ultimately get where you
want to go faster by helping with the 64-bit
vm. The rapport built
with other vm devs from working on 64-bit might
could then be applied to
MTVM. (Of course, its your free time, so you
should pursue what
interests you.)
I was barely familiar
with the VM, slang, interpreter, it years ago...
I'm totally unfamiliar
with cog.
The experience you gain
from working beside Esteban and Eliot on
64-bit Cog/Spur could then
be applied to a MTVM.
btw, you may find these
threads interesting...
* http://lists.pharo.org/pipermail/pharo-dev_lists.pharo.org/2015-April/108648.html
* http://forum.world.st/Copy-on-write-for-a-multithreaded-VM-td4837905.html
cheers -ben
I believe another item
on that list ought to be modernizing slang. So
many big items!
Robert
On 10/16/2015 12:48 PM,
Stephan Eggermont wrote:
On 16-10-15 14:05,
Robert Withers wrote:
Because of that
assumption I've made and without the
responsibilities
you have, Esteban,
but recognizing modernizing NB to FFI, my
desired
list is:
I would expect the
least total effort to be needed by keeping the
work
of Esteban and Eliot
as much as possible aligned. That is what
Esteban's
list achieves.
Stephan