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