Re: [Caml-list] Regarding SMP computing

[skaller <skaller@users.sourceforge.net>]

On Mon, 2006-09-25 at 08:13 -0400, Jacques Carette wrote:
> Over on Haskell-cafe, Simon Peyton-Jones says:
> "GHC 6.6 (release candidate available) supports parallel execution on 
> SMP machines.
> 
> Garbage collection is not parallelised yet, something we plan to fix
> this autumn."
> 
> A bit of competition is a good thing, isn't it?

Actually this isn't quite accurate, at least as I understand it.
GHC already does have fully parallel minor heap allocation
and compaction etc using a per-thread minor heap, 
but the major collection isn't only not parallel .. 
it isn't even concurrent.

[Using Cheng's terminology, parallel collection implies
multiple collector threads can cooperate so that the system
can scale to very large numbers of CPUs by allowing more
than one CPU to run the collector in simultaneously,
'merely' concurrent includes collectors limited to a
single collector thread]

-- 
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net>
Felix, successor to C++: http://felix.sf.net