J J wrote:
> I have read an article recently on transactional memory [1] and it 
> seemed to me like this might be a great opportunity for smalltalk.  If a 
> VM was created for squeak that did native threads with transactional 
> memory then I think it might be possible that most (if not all) the code 
> we have in the image right now could work about the same (and my belief 
> comes from the fact that if we introduce real threading then any state 
> changing operation is going to have to be "atomic", so we wouldn't use 
> the keyword as much as they do).

I don't understand what you mean by 'any state changing operation is 
going to have to be "atomic", so we wouldn't use the keyword as much as 
they do'? We would have to use the atomic keyword wherever there is a 
state change - why is this less for Smalltalk?

I found http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/537 very interesting on this whole 
subject. I was especially interested in the work on Merlin/TinySelf 
where message sending is (as I understand it) asynchronous. I wonder 
what would be required to spike this in Squeak even if just simulated?

Thanks,
Zulq.