Shared Memory

[Robert Jacques]

On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:20:47 -0400, sesteel <steel at kryas.com> wrote:

> I just wanted to float an idea out there.  I have been using  
> technologies such as Terracotta and Memcache at work.  Terracotta, has  
> left me wondering about the applicability of integrating shared objects  
> (memory) directly into a programming language.  Is this anything anybody  
> else here has thought of?

Yes. D2 has introduced the shared storage type (though it doesn't do  
anything yet) and there's also Bartosz's blog  
(http://bartoszmilewski.wordpress.com/feed/).

> Additionally, I was thinking about the concept of services vs libraries,  
> and how shared objects might be a way to provide fast IPC while getting  
> rid of the library concept.  Thus, each service would have it's own  
> memory space to manage and GC.  One hinderence would be the versioning  
> of the shared object, but if that object could be viewed through an  
> interface...
>
> Just brainstorming.

This sounds like you're proposing the actor model, (at a coarser level  
than objects) and possibly also thread-local heaps.
Also, for those who don't know (I didn't) Terracotta is an open-source  
Java clustering package, which essentially transparently converts a  
multi-threaded application into a cluster application. Neat.