🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct13.172450.29593@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> dlray@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Donald L Ray) writes:
>Its my understanding that RPC -remote procedure calls- provides the
>mechanisms through a local procedure that may be executed remotely on a
>remote processor and results returned to the local procedure. How new
>is this?


This is an old idea.  I've seen it in use in for over a decade.  I'm sure
it showed up even earlier than that.

It has a good point and a bad point.

The good point is that it's easy to program -- nothing new -- just the same
old procedure calls.

The bad point is that while the callee is doing its thing *and* while that
call is being transmitted *and* while the reply is coming back, the caller
is twiddling its thumbs -- either literally spinning or doing a task
switch.  As processors get faster, the time for the callee to do its thing
goes down -- but the communication time doesn't (since the speed of light
doesn't change).  So the number of instructions wasted in the caller goes
up, if the caller spins.  This forces the caller to task-switch or waste
time.


So -- you get a *big*, distributed system with lots of shared resources but
it runs like a PC Jr. (OK, so I exaggerate :-).