Re: [9fans] Barrelfish

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

> > > There is a vast range of applications that cannot
> > > be managed in real time using existing single-core technology.
> >
> > please name one.
>
> Your apparent lack of imagination surprises me.
>
> Surely you can see that a whole range of applications becomes possible when
> using a massively parallel system, when compared to a single-CPU system.  You
> could perhaps also achieve these applications using a large network of 1000
> normal computers, but that would be expensive and use a lot of space.
>
> I named two in another post: real-time animated raytracing, and instantaneous
> complex dsp over a long audio track.  I'll also mention instantaneous video
> encoding.  Instantaneous building of a complex project from source.
> (I'm defining instantaneous as less than 1 second for this.)

two points.

1.  by real time i mean this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing
i'm not sure what your definition is.  i guessing you're using the
"can keep up most of the time" definition?

2.  i still can't think of any a priori reasons why one can't do any
particular task in real time with 1 processor that one can do with
more than one processor.  perhaps the hidden assumption io
that the total processing power of an mp setup will be greater?
if the processing power is equal, certainly one would go for the
uniprocessor.

but as long as i'm being lumped in with ken, i'll take it as
a grand complement.  ☺

- erik