Upcoming article in Dr. Dobbs'

[Vlad Dumitrescu]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Thomas Lindgren" <thomasl_erlang@REDACTED>
> Maybe, to argue against my previous position, this is
> really an argument for multithreading the VM?

Well, not really. The same tricks you mentioned (load balancing, node hierarchy,
etc) would have to be implemented inside the VM. Since the VM is C code, then it
won't be easy to have it benefit from Erlang's higher-level concepts.
Multithreading the VM would probably push the bulk of work to the main
developers (because it isn't very likely that such a big thing might be done
otherwise), but it won't make things easier to do.

I feel that these already mentioned improvements might be enough (for a while,
at least) together with regular nodes:

- faster inter-node communication when on the same machine;
- load balancing (non application specific);
- migrating processes;
- clustering (=node hierarchy);
    this affects many areas that need to go from the simple local/global setup
to a hierarchical one

Some of these can already be found in existing applications, I'm sure.


The main argument is, I think, that these would also be beneficial for todays
systems, and thus it's more probable that someone will pay for the development
:-)

regards,
Vlad