[erlang-questions] hybrid heap question

[Kostis Sagonas]

Kenneth Lundin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>>From our view (OTP team at Ericsson) the Hybrid heap version of the
> emulator is experimental. With expreimental I mean that:
>  - it is definately
> not as stable and well tested as the mature separate heap solution.
> - it is not used in any products as far as I know.
> - The hybrid heap can be a very good solution when it is finished. The lack of
> compiler support (identifying data that will be sent in a message and
> can be put on shared heap from the beginning) and the lack of
> incremental GC makes it less useful in real products. There will for
> example be very long GC's in the current system, which interrupts all
> other execution in the VM.
> - We have no immediate plans to make Hybrid heap and SMP work together
> for several reasons. 1) The separate heap and SMP works very very well
> and  we see no problems with using that for any type of application.
> 2) We are dependent on the competence from the HiPE group in Uppsala
> University regarding the Hybrid heap ,we will happily include their
> contribution if
> they make Hybrid heap work together with SMP , add incremental GC etc.
> 
> In summary: Today the separate heap (default) solution is the stable
> and recommended one for both SMP and non SMP cases.
> Hybrid heap is experimental from our point of view. Might be very
> stable on non SMP but that is nothing we guarantee.
> 
> /Regards Kenneth (OTP team at Ericsson)

As somebody very involved in the design and implementation of the Hybrid 
heap version of the Erlang emulator, I just want to point out for the 
record that the following:

   > There will for example be very long GC's in the current system,
   > which interrupts all other execution in the VM.

is a general "feature" in Erlang/OTP and is not specific to the Hybrid 
vs. Private heap implementation.  Currently, the garbage collector of 
the Erlang/OTP system is not incremental and cannot be preempted.  This 
means that there is absolutely no guarantee that GC will not take 
arbitrary long time.  Again for the record, I have to point out that 
this does *not* seem to be a big problem in practice -- GC in Erlang/OTP 
is actually very fast most of the times.  However, that there is no 
bounded GC time guarantee holds independently of the architecture of the 
system and I know of no fundamental reasons why the situation is in 
principle worse in the Hybrid heap system.  In fact, it can actually be 
better because the Hybrid heap system fundamentally shares data which is 
otherwise copied (possibly multiple times) when processes communicate in 
a Private heap environment.  Again, this worst case situation does not 
seem to occur very often in practice either.

Kostis (HiPE team)