Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!ken
From: ken@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman)
Newsgroups: comp.os.mach
Subject: Re: Wish explanation of some cthread calls
Message-ID: <34632@cornell.UUCP>
Date: 28 Nov 89 02:35:02 GMT
References: <113980001@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com> <113980003@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com>
Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP
Reply-To: ken@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman)
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
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In article <113980003@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com>
   nathanm@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com (Nathan K. Meyers) writes:
>My big problem in understanding the explanation of these calls in the
>1988 Cooper/Draves paper was trying to figure out how these simple
>semantics allowed you to associate an arbitrary collection of data with
>a thread.  The answer, of course, is that you can associate a single
>pointer with the thread -- and hang whatever you want off of the
>pointer.
>

Actually, I also have problems with this aspect of Cthreads.  My
concern is that if a library needs to associate data with a task,
the message seems to be that it should use this facility.  But, if,
say, ISIS follows this rule, and CAMELOT does too, they will clobber
each other.

Personally, I think this may be a case of semantics that are just a little
too simple to be useful.....

Ken Birman