Re: following up on speed

[Ken Anderson <address@hidden>]

This is an interesting idea, ideally the application should be able to 
negotiate with the OS for the resources and a fee for providing them, and 
various rate schedules, or quality of service.


At 04:45 PM 7/19/2002, Michael Vanier wrote:

> > Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 14:44:14 -0400
> > From: Ken Anderson <kanderson@bbn.com>
> >
> > Getting the declarations write can be tricky.  While the compiler can
> > suggest that declarations are possible, it would be nice if it could put
> > them in for you!
>
>I guess getting the declarations right is even harder than getting them
>write ;-)  Sorry, couldn't resist.
>
>On a sort-of related note, I've wondered for a long time why garbage
>collection isn't provided as an operating system service instead of having
>to be re-implemented for every single language that needs it (which is
>rapidly becoming every single language except C/C++).  Given that writing a
>good GC requires knowledge of the hardware (and usually some assembly
>coding) it seems like almost a perfect example of something that should be
>done by the OS.  In addition, I suspect that an OS-level GC would be much
>more efficient, because it would be working on a much larger heap, with
>more opportunities for compaction etc. (I don't really know much about
>GC... can you tell?).  I'd appreciate it if any GC experts could tell me
>why this isn't being done.
>
>Mike