[squeak-dev] Finalization enhancement for 4.2

David T. Lewis lewis at mail.msen.com
Thu May 20 15:59:07 UTC 2010


CC to vm-dev list, follow up on technical issues should go to vm-dev.

Chris, Igor, this sounds very encouraging. Yes, I'll help on the
VM side, with guidance from Andreas and others (I am not technically
competent on this issue). I'll probably be off list for a few days,
but will catch up on this next week.

Andreas, Eliot, others - any advice or guidance? 

Dave

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 10:14:00AM -0500, Chris Muller wrote:
> I have packaged up Igor's change-sets for the finalization fix:
> 
>   http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=7525
>   http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=7473
> 
> into their respective MC packages and uploaded them to the Inbox.
> 
> Recall the original discussion:
> 
>   http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-dev/2010-March/003958.html
> 
> I have been running with Igor's enhanced VM and image-side
> finalization patches for a few weeks now.  The results are striking.
> Squeak applications using large Weak-collections deteriorate to a
> point of unusability without this fix because Squeak spends 95% of its
> time in the finalization process, leaving no time for application
> processing. With this fix installed, CPU utilization is 0% when the
> application is idle, providing excellent responsiveness.
> 
> This is a big, big, win for any application that uses Weak
> collections, and a win for Squeak overall because it's own use of
> weak-collections is enhanced.
> 
> While it seems to be backward compatible, e.g. I am able to run the
> enhanced VM on older images (including 3.9), and I am able to run with
> these image changes on an older VM, both are required to take
> advantage of the enhanced finalization.
> 
> I would like to push this into the trunk, but will need help from the
> VMMaker developers for that piece.  David?
> 
> For Magma, this wil be the most exciting and important fix since
> #becomeForward:copyHash: introduced back in 2004.
> 
>  - Chris



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