Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!agate!shelby!portia!dchapman From: dchapman@portia.Stanford.EDU (David Chapman) Newsgroups: comp.object Subject: Re: Parallelism and OOPSs Summary: forget the patent Keywords: Coupling, Decomposition, Networks Message-ID: <5553@portia.Stanford.EDU> Date: 5 Oct 89 05:14:16 GMT References: <477@schaefer.MATH.WISC.EDU> Sender: David Chapman Reply-To: dchapman@Portia.Stanford.EDU (David Chapman) Organization: Stanford University Lines: 24 In article <477@schaefer.MATH.WISC.EDU> wayne@schaefer.MATH.WISC.EDU (Rick Wayne) writes: >since objects decompose so nicely into independent entities (at least >abstractly), wouldn't this provide an excellent hook for introducing >parallelism? could be loosely or tightly coupled; message passing would >either be memory-to-memory transfer or network sends. It's a very nice way to represent the communications between parallel processes but you still have to write a parallel program. People are still trying to define generalized methodologies for parallel programming, though. OOP in itself is not enough; see the current thread on re-entrant code for one reason why not. >this sounds so obvious that i'm sure SOMEBODY must be doing it (chorus of >"that's the whole idea!" in the background), but in all the seminars i've >sat through, this specific idea was never raised. > >i'm so interested in the answer that i've risked my lucrative patent rights >by disclosing this idea. comments? It's so obvious that the Patent Office would never grant you a patent on it. It must not be "obvious to one well-versed in the field." As the proud owner of a patent (#4,849,313) I can assure you that this is true. I've also noticed the link between message-passing operating systems and OOLs for a couple of years, and since I'm "well versed"... :-)