Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a684
From: a684@mindlink.UUCP (Nick Janow)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Concurrency
Message-ID: <3287@mindlink.UUCP>
Date: 24 Sep 90 01:18:09 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Lines: 24


koopman@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Philip Koopman) writes:


> The question is: how do you get parallelism with Forth, given that the stack
> would seem to create all sorts of artificial dependencies?

The question should not be "how do we get parallelism _despite_ FORTH's
stack?"; it should be "How best can we use the power of the stack to implement
multiprocessing?".

As far as I can see, the main problem in parallelism is the efficient
communication of data and instructions between processors.  Stacks are an
efficient way of passing data between words (tasks, subroutines, whatever);
perhaps there's some way of passing data and/or instructions between processors
using stacks.

I haven't contemplated parallel processing for a while and I don't remember
doing so with stacks in mind.  Maybe something will turn up if we keep stacks
in mind while considering parallelism?  Breakthroughs often come about by
keeping several previously unrelated ideas in your thoughts while pondering a
problem.

It's something to sleep on.  :)