minithread (was OCaml on Sony PS3)

[Christophe Raffalli <Christophe.Raffalli@univ-savoie.fr>]

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I propose the following idea for OCaml on Cell PowerPC or multicore
machine (this is just an idea,
there ay be a lot of thing I did not see ... in other word there is
probably a lot of work to do, but may be not too much):

- Create two functions and one data type to start "mini-thread":

type 'a result_channel
launch : int -> ('a -> 'b) -> 'a -> 'b result_channel.
get_result : 'b result_channel list -> 'b option
(or many similar functions to wait with or without blocking the result
for one or more mini-thread).

Now the point is this: each mini-thread has its own minor-heap whose
size is given as the first argument with the following restrictions:

1) the minor heap is used as a cache : access to  the major heap copy
the data in the minor heap. One need to mix the copying
minor GC with standard caching algorithm.

2) to ease the task 1), mutation of data in the heaps of the main thread
by a mini-thread is illegal (raises an exception in the main thread ?
Static check ?). This includes the arguments of the mini-thread.

3) a mini-thread can not start another mini-thread (raises an exception
in the main thread ? Static check)

4) 2-3) imply that a mini-thread can not access data of other
mini-threads and that the only way for the main thread to
get values from a mini-thread is via their 'b result_channel. Thus, if
you have a main thread M and many mini-threads T1 ... TN
runnnig, Ti can only acces its own data and the data of M (read only).
And, M can not acces the data of T1 ... TN.

If you launch one minithread per SPU or CORE with a minor heap of the
correct size and you fine tune you application to produce not too much
cache misses, then, I think this simple model could be usefull ????

Cheers,
Christophe

-- 
Christophe Raffalli
Universite de Savoie
Batiment Le Chablais, bureau 21
73376 Le Bourget-du-Lac Cedex

tel: (33) 4 79 75 81 03
fax: (33) 4 79 75 87 42
mail: Christophe.Raffalli@univ-savoie.fr
www: http://www.lama.univ-savoie.fr/~RAFFALLI
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