Re: [9fans] Plan 9 and multicores/parallelism/concurrency?

["David Leimbach" <leimy2k@gmail.com>]

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On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 1:45 AM, ssecorp <circularfunc@gmail.com> wrote:

> from wikipedia:
> "Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system, primarily
> used for research."
>
> but it doesnt say anything more about the distributed part.
>
> I have recently found a big interest in concurrency, distributed
> systems and multicore-programming.
>
> So is Plan 9 good for a multicore-computer or what kind of distributed
> system is it made for?
>
> In what way does it make it easy?
>
> Assuming that the kernel can address multiple cores and SMP systems (I've
never tried it but I assume it can), one can write code in C via a library
called libthread, which provides a mechanism for writing concurrent programs
(originally meant to help port the programs written in the ill-fated but
very cool language Alef to C).
It features threads and typed data channels for interprocess communication
in a CSP sort of organization.

If libthread is able to grab real processors per thread and get them
scheduled, one's concurrent style code ultimately ends up having potential
to run in parallel on those cores/processors.

I think this method of writing programs designed to work on multi-core
systems is a good one.  As do the folks who use Concurrent Haskell, or even
Erlang and perhaps Scala and other "new languages".  In a sense this makes
writing code for multiple cores "easy" on Plan 9.

Dave

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