From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,7709673d1d85b3b6,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: chris.morgan@baesema.co.uk (Chris Morgan) Subject: GNAT and symmetric multi-processing! Date: 1995/04/02 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 100721937 sender: -Not-Authenticated-[3100] x-nntp-posting-host: baesema4.demon.co.uk xdisclaimer: No attempt was made to authenticate the sender's name. organization: BAeSema Limited. x-posted-from: InterNews 1.0.5@baesema4.demon.co.uk newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1995-04-02T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Dear all, -- a preamble Now that tasking works in GNAT on Sun/SPARC/Solaris2.3, I am trying to awaken interest in the real-time possibilities of Ada95 by sponsoring a little programming competition within my company. Of course knowledge is its own reward, but knowing the preferences of my colleagues who share my interest in GNAT/Ada95, the reward is some amount of alcoholic refreshment calibrated to the winners needs, so as you can see I am risking financial ruin for the sake of promoting Ada95! Briefly, I have challenged my colleagues to write an Ada95 program that demonstrates good use of tasking to perform some array of calculations, for example plotting the famous Mandelbrot set. Some dynamic creation of tasks is envisaged, possibly with the program running repeatedly to ascertain the optimum number of tasks. Maybe asynchronous transfer of control would also come in handy to exit points on the set which can't decide which pole to go to in a sensible amount of time... --a question Does anyone know whether the tasking provided by POSIX threads in GNAT will take advantage of a multi-processor machine such as a 4-cpu SPARCstation2000? This activity is strictly extra-curricular, so I have not completed reading all the GNAT info, but my understanding so far doesn't include any feel for whether an implementation must offer SMP, even though it clearly has the opportunity given a POSIX foundation. --a request One feature that would spice up the above project is the ability to display the results graphically. Does anyone have a short program which interfaces to X-Windows that they have compiled under GNAT on Solaris (or similar) which they could share with us? I think there is a need for a very simple X-based graphics library in the GNAT examples directory, as even with X bindings, there is still the difficulty that X is very large and intimidating. If I don't get any replies, I will attempt something myself and then (eventually) post the results, but I wouldn't hold your breath :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- -- Chris Morgan -- SMCS Project, BAeSma Ltd, Scientific House, 40-44 Coombe Rd,New Malden -- Surrey, England, UK -- E-mail: chris.morgan@baesema.co.uk -- Currently grappling with Ada95 via GNAT2.03 on Sun-SPARC-SOLARIS2.3 -- Member, Team Ada ------------------------------------------------------------------------