Re: Parallel & RT GC (was Re: Real-Time GC (was Re: Widespread C++...?)

[eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)]

In article <kelvin.790009178@kickapoo> kelvin@cs.iastate.edu (Kelvin Nilsen) writes:

   > By placing the custom hardware within the memory subsystem,
   > we are able to provide the desired benefits without most of the
   > costs of developing special-purpose CPUs.

    There is another major reason for putting the custom hardware in
the memory system.  There is a fairly large class of problems which
require time proportional to n^k lg2 n on any von Neuman architecture,
but can be solved in time n^(k-1) lg2 on hardware which supports
clearing large sections of memory to zero in constant time.  (Note
that if k is one, you can get orders of magnitude improvement.)

     Since many memory systems can support this happy property, all you
need to do to get the faster algorithms is to bypass the OS, or more
politely, have an OS call which clears a section of memory.


					Robert I. Eachus

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					Robert I. Eachus

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