problem with shared heap?

[Vlad Dumitrescu (EAW)]

I stand corrected. Thanks!
/Vlad

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Erik Stenman [mailto:Erik.Stenman@REDACTED]
> Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 1:47 PM
> To: Erlang-questions (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: problem with shared heap?
> 
> 
> 
> Vlad Dumitrescu wrote:
> 
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > > You misinterpreted me, (or I didn't make myself clear). I
> > > don't expect
> > > it to be faster in all cases, but I wouldn't expect to 
> see any cases
> > > where a shared heap performed worse than without it. Maybe on
> > > par, but
> > > not worse. Hence my question, will there be cases where using
> > > a shared
> > > heap will degrade performance?
> >
> > The answer is yes. For example in cases where many 
> processes are spawned
> which create a lot of garbage and then die.
> > In the normal heap case, the cleanup is almost instantaneous. With a
> shared heap, garbage collections need to be done.
> 
> No this is not the problem.
> The scenarrio you describe does not cost anything extra in 
> the shared heap,
> since the garbage collector is a copying one, none of the 
> dead data needs to
> be visited.
> 
> The problem in the current system is that if you have a 
> process with a huge
> (live) data set, all this data hast to be traversed (and 
> copied) at a major
> GC, even if that major GC is triggered by another process.
> This problem might be reduced with a new GC and GC policies 
> that are better
> adapted to the shared heap.
> 
> 
> /Erik
>