2008/12/17 Klaus D. Witzel <[email protected]>: > Hi Alex, > > I'm sorry I'm just a frequent reader of the Pharo mailing list, so here's my > response by email. Feel free to forward it. > > On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:11:52 +0100, you wrote: > >> Hi Igor and Klaus, >> >> Having a description about Hydra will really help promoting your project. >> Maybe we could continue what I started to write... > > The Hydra VM is usable as is and in production, serving heavy used Croquet > site, IIRC.
Really? I didn't heard about that. I wouldn't recommend to use it in production before extensively testing the different plugins which has to be changed to work in multiple threads. I can only say, that after few hiccups, i managed to run Qwaq Forums image (networking + graphics + ffi + sound + ... ) . It proves that for main image, things are more or less comparable to original Squeak VM. But there is no such guarantees for multiple images in multiple threads - this requires serious testing before using in production. > Hydra has everything you need for the Multi-core VM of Squeak: > > - launch and control multiple .images in native threads > - control these threads from the Smalltalk language level > - communicate beween .images through channels > - any number of related/unrelated .images can be run > > What is not done yet (Igor would correct me) is making Hydra available on > Mac and Linux(en). > There is initial port on Mac, made by John. Some parts made by Matthew for linux but didn't finished. The main work is to visit all C sources and make them compatible with Hydra. Also , make plugin code be able to work with multiple threads. > In light of recent discussion with Stef about ESUG founding, I would suggest > you perhaps consider to make Hydra available for you Mac users. > > Cheers, > Klaus > > P.S. Alex the "rest" of the discussion you recalled above (the paper you > suggested) is about a very particular use of Hydra technology, formost for > and by enthusiastic VM engineers to be "the first" who get it going. Hydra > can do and does well without all that (without the cloning of object > subgraphs "baby Hydras" from the running .image): just save an .image file > and then start it up in Hydra. > >> Alexandre >> >> On 17 Dec 2008, at 09:52, Oscar Nierstrasz wrote: >> >>> >>> Hi folks, >>> >>> Has anyone looked at the Qwac Hydra stuff? >>> >>> http://www.qwaq.com/HydraVM/ >>> >>> >>> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2008-February/125719.html >>> >>> There was quite a lot of discussion on squeak-dev ast February, but >>> not much since then. >>> >>> I would really love to see a multi-core Pharo. If someone has an idea >>> how this could be done, I would be interested to learn more. I think >>> getting Pharo to exploit multi-cores could be a big selling point in >>> the future ... >>> >>> - on >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Pharo-project mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project >>> >> > > > -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig. _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
