Thanks Jafar for these very interesting comparisons. Robert would know better
than I, but it may well be that when he first told me of his plans to do
stackless co-expressions, I said something stupid like: my monitoring
facilities are built using the current co-expression switch and Unicon will
never adopt a different co-expression switch unless the monitoring facilities
are supported. So he went off and invented Object Icon. Then again, I may be
misremembering and inventing that anecdote. [😊] In any case, if he has 27%
faster co-expressions that is a great technical accomplishment, worthy of
Robert's other great creations. UDB and other monitors remain the world's
biggest customer of co-expressions, so I wish monitors ran on his 27% faster
co-expressions. And I am not sure I'd give up any normal execution speed for
faster co-expressions, since most programs do not use co-expressions. But I
recognize that these numbers are not authoritative.
Cheers,
Clint
________________________________
From: Jafar Al-Gharaibeh <to.ja...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2016 11:12:28 AM
To: Bruce & Breeanna Rennie
Cc: Unicon
Subject: Re: [Unicon-group] Soft thread changes
My previous email decided to "fly" before I was done :) .... here is the
results:
Objecticon: 9.7 seconds
Unicon: 12.3 seconds.
The context switch is 27% faster in Objecticon, I actually expected a lot
bigger difference.
To get a feel of the interpreter loop performance in both languages I ran this
program:
procedure main()
every 1 to 200000000
end
Objecticon: 17.0 seconds
Unicon: 11.9 seconds.
Unicon is 43% faster. These were quick tests, so number should not be taken
literally, I just wanted to get a quick reference point.
Cheers,
Jafar
On Sat, Apr 30, 2016 at 12:58 PM, Jafar Al-Gharaibeh
<to.ja...@gmail.com<mailto:to.ja...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Here are some information about Objecticon co-expressions including difference
in semantics compared with Icon/Unicon:
http://objecticon.sourceforge.net/Coexpressions.html
And here is another link with a brief discussion about the implementation of
co-expressions:
http://objecticon.sourceforge.net/ImplementationNotes.html
I'm not familiar with ObjectIcon implementation to say much about it, but from
the discussion in the above link, co-expressions seems to be a lot cheaper in
term of memory requirement (no stack), and in context switch performance (no
recursive call to the interpreter). Co-expression stack in Unicon is
configurable so you can reduce the memory requirement if the application uses a
lot of "little" co-expressions, but still a stack is needed.
On the performance front of context switch, while a recursive call to the
interpreter is needed, it only takes place once at the first activation so it
is not really a problem in this case. There is however some state that needs to
be saved/restored, both c state and interpreter state. With native coswitch in
Unicon that we have in all common platforms now (recently added Mac OS and ARM
Linux) the cosiwtch is "fast". I decided to test how "slow" Unicon's context
switch compared to the stackless/non-recursive implementation of co-expressions
in Object Icon. I built both on my Raspberry Pi (No graphics in both, and
concurrency turned off in the case of Unicon). Here is the program that I
tested:
procedure main()
c := create 1 to 20000000
while @c
end
On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 8:01 PM, Bruce & Breeanna Rennie
<bren...@dcsi.net.au<mailto:bren...@dcsi.net.au>> wrote:
Good morning Jay and Steve,
It is a personal project to understand the difference between Unicon and
ObjectIcon. My reasons are related to the co-expression implementation
differences and the fact that ObjectIcon is a no recursive interpreter
(unlike Unicon). My original reason for looking at both is that I am
looking at a reimplementation of the icon runtime as a indirect threaded
form. I have been puzzling about this for many years but, it has only
been in recent times that I have the extra time to look at these things.
My investigations should, at this point, have no bearing on what Jafar
is doing. As far as I can tell, I am the only one looking at the
implementation differences. As I am NOT a c programmer, I am also having
to look at the implementation as a novice. I have always found c as
being a hodge podge in terms of a language. But that is really neither
here nor there.
At this point, I can't give any real comment on either implementation
with respect to threads, co-expressions and efficiency.
regards
Bruce Rennie
On 30/04/16 02:37, Jay Hammond wrote:
> Robert Parlett developed Objecticon.
>
> https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:ObjectIcon
>
> and
>
> http://objecticon.sourceforge.net/
>
> say a bit about it.
>
> From a long time ago maybe 8 years, I seem to remember there being
> discussion in this group about a different co-expression implementation
> in Objecticon being more efficient at threads, co-expressions than the
> then Unicon one.
>
> There was of course also a downside to that approach. There always are
> compromises.
>
> If it's not too much of a distraction, would Bruce and or Jafar care
> to comment on where
> Unicon (and Objecticon) are now wrt threads, co-expressions, efficiency?
>
> jay
>
> On 29/04/2016 17:04, Steve Graham wrote:
>> ObjectIcon?
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* Bruce & Breeanna Rennie
>> <bren...@dcsi.net.au<mailto:bren...@dcsi.net.au>>
>> *To:* Jafar Al-Gharaibeh <to.ja...@gmail.com<mailto:to.ja...@gmail.com>>
>> *Cc:* Unicon group
>> <unicon-group@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:unicon-group@lists.sourceforge.net>>
>> *Sent:* Thursday, April 28, 2016 8:35 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: [Unicon-group] Soft thread changes
>>
>> Good afternoon Jafar,
>>
>> As I am able I'll have a look and see if I can add anything of worth for
>> the implementation. The idea sounds good. At the moment I am still
>> trying to wrap my head around the differences between Unicon and
>> ObjectIcon implementation details.
>>
>> regards
>>
>> Bruce Rennie
>>
>> On 29/04/16 12:21, Jafar Al-Gharaibeh wrote:
>> > Good Morning Bruce,
>> >
>> > Soft-threads ( software threads or maybe vs hard-threads) are a hybrid
>> > between native co-expressions and threads made possible by my recent
>> > changes to allow native coswitch() to coexist with concurrent threads.
>> > They are similar to native co-expressions in that they are completely
>> > a Unicon thing (no OS context, i.e can't be scheduled by the OS), but
>> > they are similar to threads in that they are concurrent. Since a soft
>> > thread doesn't have a pthread (OS context) it needs to be scheduled
>> > "manually". Unlike co-expressions which get scheduled via an explicit
>> > activation, soft threads are managed implicitly by the language's
>> > runtime. That means we need a scheduler that takes care of this new
>> > task with all of the problems that comes with it. :)
>> >
>> > The goal is allow us to create a lot of "cheap" concurrent threads
>> > even without creating pthreads, or get by with a few pthreads through
>> > thread pooling, etc. The idea is to decouple Unicon's threads from the
>> > the OS threads.
>> >
>> > What I have committed so far under "SoftThread" ifdefs is very very
>> > basic experimental implementation that I did in under two hours. I
>> > got some basic scheduling to work and was able to run a small demo. We
>> > have a long a long way to go. If anyone is interested in this or
>> > helping with implementation I'd be very happy to share more details
>> > with them.
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> > Jafar
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 8:25 PM, Bruce & Breeanna Rennie
>> > <bren...@dcsi.net.au<mailto:bren...@dcsi.net.au>
>> > <mailto:bren...@dcsi.net.au<mailto:bren...@dcsi.net.au>>
>> <mailto:bren...@dcsi.net.au<mailto:bren...@dcsi.net.au>
>> <mailto:bren...@dcsi.net.au<mailto:bren...@dcsi.net.au>>>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Good morning Jafar,
>> >
>> > Can you clue us into what the soft-thread changes are for, please?
>> >
>> > regards
>> >
>> > Bruce Rennie
>> >
>>
>> Unicon-group mailing list
>> Unicon-group@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:Unicon-group@lists.sourceforge.net>
>> <mailto:Unicon-group@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:Unicon-group@lists.sourceforge.net>>
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unicon-group
>>
>>
>
>
>
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