[Squeak-VMdev] GC improvements

[Tim Rowledge]

Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:

> Just curious: Did we ever come to a conclusion re: GC improvements? I'm 
> asking because I *will* require proper weak array support for Tweak in 
> the not-too-far future and I'd like to see those changes rolled into 
> standard VMs as soon as possible.
It's an issue of time. I tried testing out the changes (which seem to function
adequately from the limited testing I managed to do) but there appeared to be a
massive performance hit.

First issue of time is that whilst trying to characterise that and see what I
could do about it I discovered a machine dependant ultra-weirdness in my time
grabbing code which made timing unreliable. (see an email from me some time ago
withexplanation of crystal frequency drift and net time correction etc)  I'm
still trying to find a way out of that hole.

Second issue is _my_ time of course. I have fulltime work right now on a quite
different issue and plenty of 'spare time' things that have to be done, like
most of us.

Third issue is that Ian pretty much has the vm baton right now to do whatever
the next step of 64bitting is; I imagine getting some C type stuff in to make
an equivalent >2Gb address fix for Ned's earlier code is among the work. Now
you control that somewhat, being his leader. Once that is passed back I can try
to get on with dealing with the gc code changes etc. I was hoping to be with
you dealing with this right now but that damn passport still hasn't arrived.

And of course you could gain some control over my time by simple application of
an employment contract. :-) 


tim
--
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Useful random insult:- Can't find log base two of 65536 without a calculator.