Re: [Chicken-users] An alternative thread system?

[Vincent Manis]

On 2008-Aug-10, at 11:44, Elf wrote:
> NO KNOWN MULTIPLATFORM LANGUAGE IMPLEMENTATIONS HAVE WORKING NATIVE  
> THREADING.
> NO KNOWN MULTIPLATFORM LIBRARY IMPLEMENTATIONS HAVE WORKING NATIVE  
> THREADING.

Seconding Elf's comments. A shared garbage-collected memory is only  
one of the factors that makes native
threads almost impossible.

CPython uses a Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) to implement critical  
sections in the interpreter, thus rendering native
threads in that system impossible. Some version of the Python  
interpreter (I think it was 1.6) was rewritten without the
GIL, so as to provide for native threads. The resulting system ran  
more slowly on both single and multi-threaded code
than did the standard version. I'm not that knowledgeable about what  
the Python community is doing now, but I do
remember reading that their BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life) had  
decreed that There Shall Never Be Native
Threads.

If you have a multi-core machine, and want to use all the cores, fork  
off processes.

-- v