Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ketch.cis.ohio-state.edu!martens
From: martens@ketch.cis.ohio-state.edu (Jeff Martens)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Multiprocessing-Multitasking
Message-ID: <42406@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 9 Apr 89 20:50:32 GMT
References: <12700@louie.udel.EDU>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Reply-To: Jeff Martens <martens@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science
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In article <12700@louie.udel.EDU> DAVEA%CERNVM.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (David Almond) writes:

:: In that the amiga has dedicated processers for graphics etc it is, to some
:: degree multitasking, but not in any sophisticated, scheduled sense.

::::Do you write for BYTE, by any chance?  That's dead wrong, on every account.

::::The Amiga is FULLY multitasking, in the sense that the processor is time
::::sliced among many processes.  Much in the same vein as UNIX, OS/9, Aegis,
::::VMS, etc.

:  No, if I did the sales would soar. What I meant to say, and not wishing
:to burn precious space, is that the though the Amiga is multitaskingfor
:all the reasions you outlined is not fully multitasking beause there
:is no scheduler which controls overall running of tasks. So that it
:would no how much spare capacity exists on each intelligent processing
:device, as it processes, and thus be able to dispatch the next processing
:task in the most efficent manner.

You're confused.  For the reasons the other poster outlined, the Amiga
does have a full-blown scheduler:  tasks are started, stopped,
time-sliced, and prioritized.  What else do you want from a scheduler?
Certainly the Amiga scheduler "controls the overall" scheduling "of
tasks." 					     ----------

I'm not sure what you meant by "spare capacity...", but most OS
schedulers aren't brilliant, and don't do much more.  You may be
thinking of resource tracking or protection, which the Amiga does
lack, but these wouldn't be part of the scheduler anyhow.
-=-
-- Jeff (martens@cis.ohio-state.edu)

...and on Wall St., the Tao is unchanged in moderate trading...