From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.1 (2015-04-28) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.1 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [45.79.103.53]) by inbox.vuxu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id 56f42824 for ; Fri, 29 Jun 2018 19:02:39 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 87BD0A1B12; Sat, 30 Jun 2018 05:02:38 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 464EEA1857; Sat, 30 Jun 2018 05:02:20 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 61C08A1857; Sat, 30 Jun 2018 05:02:18 +1000 (AEST) Received: from hacklheber.piermont.com (hacklheber.piermont.com [166.84.7.14]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id C810FA1849 for ; Sat, 30 Jun 2018 05:02:17 +1000 (AEST) Received: from snark.cb.piermont.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by hacklheber.piermont.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0F0C411B; Fri, 29 Jun 2018 15:02:17 -0400 (EDT) Received: from jabberwock.cb.piermont.com (jabberwock.cb.piermont.com [10.160.2.107]) by snark.cb.piermont.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E053C2DED83; Fri, 29 Jun 2018 15:02:16 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2018 15:02:16 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" To: Larry McVoy Message-ID: <20180629150216.35c1a11b@jabberwock.cb.piermont.com> In-Reply-To: <20180629175126.GB10867@mcvoy.com> References: <81277CC3-3C4A-49B8-8720-CFAD22BB28F8@bitblocks.com> <20180628141538.GB663@thunk.org> <20180628144017.GB21688@mcvoy.com> <20180628105538.65f82615@jabberwock.cb.piermont.com> <20180628145825.GE21688@mcvoy.com> <2B710879-7659-47A4-AA86-03F232F7B78B@tfeb.org> <20180628160202.GF21688@mcvoy.com> <79022674-0FFA-4B1B-8A27-4C403D51540E@tfeb.org> <20180628170955.GH21688@mcvoy.com> <8881414B-FF5C-4BD9-B518-AD22366DE4BC@tfeb.org> <20180629175126.GB10867@mcvoy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [TUHS] PDP-11 legacy, C, and modern architectures X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.20 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org, tfb@tfeb.org Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" On Fri, 29 Jun 2018 10:51:26 -0700 Larry McVoy wrote: > > But I think my usage tells you something important: that the > > performance of individual cores will, inevitably, become > > increasingly tiny compared to the performance of the system they > > are in .... > > Yeah, so what? That wasn't the point being discussed though you > and Perry keep pushing it. Perhaps we're not agreed on what was originally motivating the discussion. I believe we started with whether modern parallel computing environments might need something more than C. I think the original hardware question this spawned was: is dealing with lots of cores simultaneously here to stay, and do you get something out of having language support to help with it? We were trying to address that question, and given that, I think we've been on point. Single programs that have to handle large numbers of threads and cores are now common. Every interesting use of the GPU on your machine is like this, including the classic ones like rendering images to your screen, but also newer ones like being exploited for all sorts of purposes by your browser that aren't related to video as such. Your desktop browser is a fine example of other sorts of parallelism, too: it uses loads of parallelism (not merely concurrency) on a modern desktop to deal with rapid processing of the modern hideous and bloated browsing stack. As for whether there's an advantage to modern languages here, the answer there is also "yes", Mozilla only really managed to get a bunch of parallelism into Firefox because they used a language (Rust) with a pretty advanced linear type system to assure that they didn't have concurrency problems. Perry -- Perry E. Metzger perry@piermont.com