From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-version: 1.0 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Date: Fri, 4 Sep 2009 09:49:02 -0700 From: Roman Shaposhnik In-reply-to: To: comeau@comeaucomputing.com, Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Message-id: <262B885A-5320-40F1-9484-EB16CF0F1AC9@sun.com> References: <3e1162e60909030844r8760a8fu1b27d6e60965ecfb@mail.gmail.com> <1251993672.16936.4779.camel@work.SFBay.Sun.COM> Subject: Re: [9fans] "Blocks" in C Topicbox-Message-UUID: 64d7eec4-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Sep 4, 2009, at 2:15 AM, Greg Comeau wrote: > In article <1251993672.16936.4779.camel@work.SFBay.Sun.COM>, > Roman V Shaposhnik wrote: >> On Thu, 2009-09-03 at 08:44 -0700, David Leimbach wrote: >> >>> The blocks aren't interesting at all by themselves, I totally agree >>> with that. However what they do to let you write a function inline, >>> that can be pushed to another function, to be executed on a >>> concurrent >>> FIFO, is where the real power comes out. >>> >>> >>> I'm not 100% sure why the heck they did it this way, which is >>> totally >>> different from any other version of concurrent programming setup >>> I've >>> seen, except maybe that Apple likes to "think different"? >> >> It seems that quite a few concurrency frameworks worth the paper >> their >> APIs are written on, are converging on this model. The ultimate goal >> has to do with encapsulation of the computation into idempotent units >> and describing the topology between those units. That separates the >> executor from the semantics of computations nicely and has all >> sorts of >> bonuses as far as bridging the gap between SMP and distributes >> systems >> are concerned. >> >> I think the semantics of what needs to be done is well understood. >> The >> million dollar question is how to best express such a semantics in >> what >> still looks like a programming language. >> >> What Apple has done is one way of attacking the problem. Where I >> sit we >> explore CPS for doing very similar sort of thing. One point is >> clear -- >> there no consensus yet. > > I don't think I follow what you just said I can explain if there's interest. Perhaps in a different thread. Thanks, Roman. P.S. I've just spent past couple of months working on a prototype of a parallel framework. I'm not sure I'll be allowed to continue that work, so I might as well brag about it here.