Kill a NIF's process

[Max Lapshin]

We have a nice hardware that requires asynchronous termination, so we
wrap each NIF object inside a process that "is not supposed to die"
and this process becomes a wrapper that tracks its own erlang-level
ref count.

On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 7:37 PM Sverker Eriksson
<sverker.eriksson@REDACTED> wrote:
>
> At process termination the deallocation of the heap is delayed until a running dirty NIF has returned. This to make sure the dirty NIF can safely continue read its arguments.
>
>
>
> The firing of links and monitors (including NIF monitor down calls), on the other hand, are not delayed by a running dirty NIF.
>
>
>
> I hope that answered the question.
>
>
>
> /Sverker, Erlang/OTP
>
>
>
> From: erlang-questions <erlang-questions-bounces@REDACTED> On Behalf Of Robert Harris
> Sent: den 21 april 2021 18:06
> To: erlang-questions@REDACTED
> Subject: Kill a NIF's process
>
>
>
> Hello all.
>
> Suppose there is a dirty NIF that is associated with a resource object
> initialised with a down callback. Further, the NIF is passed some term
> that it spends a long time examining; for the sake of argument, it
> repeatedly reads the memory underlying a binary.
>
> If the process is killed, e.g. by exit/2, is the NIF's resource object's
> down callback called before the VM releases terms in the victim's
> environment (e.g. the term whose memory the NIF is reading)? If so,
> does releasing block on the down callback?
>
> Regards,
>
> Robert Harris
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