🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <rf3mxlc.abell@netcom.com> abell@netcom.com (Steven T. Abell) writes:
>NoNoNoNoNo! (Warning: entering the ozone layer now)
>
>This points up a problem with traditional computing environments. If you
>think of memory as being either RAM, where your computer does its work,
>and Disk, where your computer stores its work, you end up with this waste
>of resources and loss of performance.
>
>If you're going to keep executables in RAM, that's OK. But it's not OK to
>copy that program from one place in RAM to another to execute it, which is
>what a ramdisk does. A really good operating system would let you execute
>the program in place. Of course, that means you must write re-entrant code
>*always*.
>
>While NeXT made some real improvements in usability, the next leap forward
>needs to include RAM-resident program files that are re-entrant and execute
>in place, running under a *real* realtime OS.
>
>(You can take off your space suits now, but the preceding is no joke.)
>
>Steve abell@netcom.com

    Heh.  That is *exactly* what the Amiga's resident does.  Not quite in
    the backwater, eh?	The Amiga's resident will preload AND pre-relocate
    a program in memory.  The program is reentrant, you can run as many
    simultanious instances of it as you like, and startup is instantanious.

    But on the NeXT (or any UNIX machine), truely, the only place where you
    get a meaningful performance boost is if the OS caches the thing for
    you run-ready.  A NeXT ram disk is only a half step and as people have
    mentioned, it can get swapped... you still have to go through a load &
    process creation phase which involves a lot of work.

						    -Matt

--

    Matthew Dillon	    dillon@Overload.Berkeley.CA.US
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