begin quoting Darren New as of Wed, Jun 13, 2007 at 06:27:58PM -0700: > Paul G. Allen wrote: > >NT dose not support true preemptive multi-tasking. > > I don't think you know what preemptive multi-tasking means.
Dem's fightin' words! "Preemptive multitasking" means that you don't have to think about what other processes may or may not be doing. No yields necessary, no cooperation. Write your programs to be right greedy little bastards, and the OS will make sure everyone gets to run appropriately. Continuations and throwing in lots of "yields()" is a sign that one doesn't have preemptive multitasking in the target environment. (Heh. I find myself writing "pre-emptive multitasking" rather than "preemptive multi-tasking" -- probably because multitasking has been an important feature in my computing experience for better than twenty years; I think it's a word all of its own now, while "preemptive" looks to have one too many "e"s.) > It doesn't mean "servicing interrupts promptly." That would be "real-time". Would it? I thought real-time was all about determinism. If it deterministically waited until next week, it ought to still be a candidate for "real-time", no? :) -- It's been said that a good Payroll system is a real-time system. Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
