Re: Tasking performance between Ada83 and Ada95

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <5oir0v$mgu$1@gonzo.sun3.iaf.nl>, Geert Bosch <geert@gonzo.sun3.iaf.nl> writes:

> IMO the best solution would be to start X system level threads and
> implement a user-level threads package on top of it. Of course
> there will be a little extra need for locking, but on platforms
> suitable for multi-processing there exist CPU-instructions that
> make the implementation of fast locks possible.

That is the method used by Alpha VMS.  The kernel thread primitives
in fact are not documented for public consumption.  The documented
interface is the DECthreads library (which has a couple different
APIs matching varying styles and standards).  DECthreads creates the
user-mode lightweight threads which then get scheduled onto some
number of kernel threads (typically numbering on the order of the
number of CPUs).

Larry Kilgallen