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From: "rob pike" <rob@plan9.bell-labs.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] cooperative threads
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 09:01:17 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <200008211301.JAA28588@cse.psu.edu> (raw)

> I think threads are popular for two main reasons:
> (1) They are an easy way to exploit multiple processing units.
> (2) They are much lighter weight than communicating full processes.

1) is irrelevant on a uniprocessor while 2) is a red herring: processes
are not intrinsically heavyweight.  Nonetheless, I agree that these
are the reasons threads are popular.

However, they are used throughout Plan 9 for a different reason:
they provide an excellent approach for structuring programs,
especially programs that must handle multiple sources of input.
Examples include user-level file servers and anything interactive.
See
	http://plan9.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/doc/89/1-a.ps.gz
for some old thinking of mine on the subject.  This paper was
written a couple of years before 8½, but you can see where I'm
going.

-rob



             reply	other threads:[~2000-08-21 13:01 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2000-08-21 13:01 rob pike [this message]
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2000-08-18 22:06 Russ Cox
2000-08-18 22:56 ` Boyd Roberts
2000-08-19  6:34 ` Lucio De Re
2000-08-21  8:59   ` Douglas A. Gwyn

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