From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.3 required=5.0 tests=AWL autolearn=disabled version=3.1.3 X-Original-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 86A28BBCA for ; Fri, 9 May 2008 22:26:11 +0200 (CEST) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AhgBAK9QJEjBtPs+mmdsb2JhbACSBwEBAQEBBgcIBxEFmR8 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.27,462,1204498800"; d="scan'208";a="26012175" Received: from mailgw4.ericsson.se ([193.180.251.62]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 09 May 2008 22:26:05 +0200 Received: from mailgw4.ericsson.se (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by mailgw4.ericsson.se (Symantec Mail Security) with ESMTP id DD7DF204B6; Fri, 9 May 2008 22:26:04 +0200 (CEST) X-AuditID: c1b4fb3e-ac194bb000004ec0-f4-4824b35c2f4c Received: from esealmw126.eemea.ericsson.se (unknown [153.88.254.123]) by mailgw4.ericsson.se (Symantec Mail Security) with ESMTP id C25B42042A; Fri, 9 May 2008 22:26:04 +0200 (CEST) Received: from esealmw128.eemea.ericsson.se ([153.88.254.172]) by esealmw126.eemea.ericsson.se with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830); Fri, 9 May 2008 22:26:04 +0200 Received: from ws73032.uab.ericsson.se ([130.100.73.32]) by esealmw128.eemea.ericsson.se with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830); Fri, 9 May 2008 22:26:04 +0200 Received: from [153.88.16.56] by ws73032.uab.ericsson.se (8.11.7p2+Sun/client-1.3uab4) id m49KQ3a05912; Fri, 9 May 2008 22:26:03 +0200 (MEST) Message-ID: <4824B35A.9070403@ericsson.com> Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 22:26:02 +0200 From: "Ulf Wiger (TN/EAB)" User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (Windows/20080421) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jon Harrop Cc: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Re: not all functional languages lack parallelism References: <200805090139.54870.jon@ffconsultancy.com> <4824448C.9030102@ericsson.com> <200805091910.08348.jon@ffconsultancy.com> In-Reply-To: <200805091910.08348.jon@ffconsultancy.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 09 May 2008 20:26:04.0342 (UTC) FILETIME=[E7844560:01C8B212] X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== X-Spam: no; 0.00; parallelism:01 parallelism:01 scalable:01 jocaml:01 erlang:01 statically:01 erlang:01 ocaml:01 ocaml:01 mutable:01 haskell:01 wrote:01 computation:01 data:02 structures:02 Jon Harrop skrev: > On Friday 09 May 2008 13:33:16 Ulf Wiger wrote: >> Jon Harrop skrev: >>> 1. Lack of Parallelism: Yes, this is already a complete show >>> >> > stopper. Exploiting multicores requires a scalable concurrent >> > GC and message passing (like JoCaml) is not a substitute. >> > Unfortunately, this is now true of all functional languages >> > available for Linux, which is why we have now migrated >>> entirely to Windows and F#. >> Dear Jon, >> >> I will keep reminding you that Erlang is a functional language >> (just not a statically typed one). It has very lightweight >> processes, concurrent schedulers on multicore, and per-process >> GC. It scales very well on multicore. > > I will keep reminding you at Erlang is not competitively > performance for CPU-bound computation like number crunching. There is a vast number of applications where performance is not about number crunching. OCaml stands a good chance of expanding into some of them, e.g. if it can grow into providing better support for concurrency. > The fact that it scales well on > distributed clusters for massively concurrent applications > is irrelevant: that has nothing to do with multicore > computing. Who's been talking about distributed clusters? Erlang does scale on distributed clusters, but the link I provided was about scaling on multicore. OCaml could too, but I don't think that insisting on the use of mutable data structures is the way to go. This may surprise you, but I don't subscribe to this list in order to try to convert OCaml programmers to Erlang. I think Erlang, OCaml and Haskell can benefit from an exchange of ideas. I will continue to believe that at least some members of the OCaml community share this view. BR, Ulf W