[Vm-dev] [Vm-beginners] Stability of the external plugin interface

[tim Rowledge]

wrt the speed of calls to plugins, I wrote that mechanism a few years back (um, actually 15 years apparently) and the actual routine call should be exactly as fast as a number primitive - the code address is in the cache tables. Hmm.. does cog inline cache stuff affect that? I don't think so but could be wrong.

The only slow-down likely would be the potentially longer-winded routines to get stuff of the stack/instvars and put answers back. If one were to postulate changing to only internal plugins (to provide some modicum of modularity and maintain the named prim interface that was a key original driver) and having all external code be ffi called, then I rather think we could improve the get/put code.

> On 2020-05-27, at 3:28 PM, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>  https://lists.cuis.st/mailman/archives/cuis-dev/2020-May/001736.html

Yup; a very good summary.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.