Re: [tlug] STM (was: Re: work times & accommodation @tokyo)

[Attila Kinali <attila@example.com>]

On Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:39:29 +0900
"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com> wrote:

> Attila Kinali writes:
> 
>  > I could see a couple of reasons why STM cannot work the first
>  > time i read about it. So this argument "why shouldn't it" is
>  > pretty much void.
>  > 
>  > As an example, imagine two tasks doing some work on exactly the
>  > same data set in a loop, over and over again. Task B takes longer
>  > than task A to finish its work.
> 
> The Doctor says, "put down the hammer".  Of course you use some kind
> of queue in this case.
> 
> But no matter what you do, you're not going to get much better
> performance than if you combine the tasks in the same loop instead of
> running them in separate threads/processes.

Exactly, but unfortunately, there are cases where you cannot
do that and you have to be able to have updates from different
tasks. And yes, this is really a pathological case that you should
not design for. But then again, we are talking about the real
world, where such things come up. Any system (being it software
or hardware) that does not account for the possibility of non-ideal
behaviour will fail at some point. At latest when a few thousand
people are using it.

			Attila Kinali

-- 
The true CS students do not need to know how to program.
They learn how to abstract the process of programming to
the point of making programmers obsolete.
		-- Jabber in #holo