>  > But what about using PTHREAD support instead! Seems a simple choice
>? for many platforms that have PTHREAD ...
>
>Funny you should raise this ... I was just asking Andreas, off-list, about
>the lack of true threading in the Squeak VM.
>
>He felt that:
>
>       1 threads are just not available on all platforms
>	  and their semantics differ wildly (look at Java's
>         differences regarding threads across different platforms).
>
>       2 multi-threading does not give any advantage in speed unless
>         you're running on a multi-processor scheme.
>

Well I'm not talking about Threads for squeak processes/threads. 
Rather an issue with polling etc. Refer back to David Simmons note 
then look at our clock watching and why? Perhaps one could use a 
timer based thread to signal a clock related action, versus 
watching/polling the clock. Also see checkForInterrupts

I realize there are issues across platforms, but for platforms that 
support good periodic threads there might be good performance gains?

Mmm also for example we have logic both in the image and in the VM on 
the mac to poll for events, that does get clamped to 1/60 of second 
per poll but it's complex. Under os-x events can be interrupt driven, 
and perhaps I should experiment with a periodic thread to pull them 
from the event queue.

-- 
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John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> 1-800-477-2659
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
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