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Communication between Erlang processes has conceptually always been
performed through asynchronous signaling. The runtime system
implementation has however previously preformed most operation
synchronously. In a system with only one true thread of execution, this
is not problematic (often the opposite). In a system with multiple threads
of execution (as current runtime system implementation with SMP support)
it becomes problematic. This since it often involves locking of structures
when updating them which in turn cause resource contention. Utilizing
true asynchronous communication often avoids these resource contention
issues.
The case that triggered this change was contention on the link lock due
to frequent updates of the monitor trees during communication with a
frequently used server. The signal order delivery guarantees of the
language makes it hard to change the implementation of only some signals
to use true asynchronous signaling. Therefore the implementations
of (almost) all signals have been changed.
Currently the following signals have been implemented as true
asynchronous signals:
- Message signals
- Exit signals
- Monitor signals
- Demonitor signals
- Monitor triggered signals (DOWN, CHANGE, etc)
- Link signals
- Unlink signals
- Group leader signals
All of the above already defined as asynchronous signals in the
language. The implementation of messages signals was quite
asynchronous to begin with, but had quite strict delivery constraints
due to the ordering guarantees of signals between a pair of processes.
The previously used message queue partitioned into two halves has been
replaced by a more general signal queue partitioned into three parts
that service all kinds of signals. More details regarding the signal
queue can be found in comments in the erl_proc_sig_queue.h file.
The monitor and link implementations have also been completely replaced
in order to fit the new asynchronous signaling implementation as good
as possible. More details regarding the new monitor and link
implementations can be found in the erl_monitor_link.h file.
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Magic references are *intentionally* indistinguishable from ordinary
references for the Erlang software. Magic references do not change
the language, and are intended as a pure runtime internal optimization.
An ordinary reference is typically used as a key in some table. A
magic reference has a direct pointer to a reference counted magic
binary. This makes it possible to implement various things without
having to do lookups in a table, but instead access the data directly.
Besides very fast lookups this can also improve scalability by
removing a potentially contended table. A couple of examples of
planned future usage of magic references are ETS table identifiers,
and BIF timer identifiers.
Besides future optimizations using magic references it should also
be possible to replace the exposed magic binary cludge with magic
references. That is, magic binaries that are exposed as empty
binaries to the Erlang software.
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Can still not setup -a, but cerl works.
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Still does not run, just compiles.
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In halfword emulator, make ETS use a variant of the internal term
format that uses relative offsets instead of absolute pointers. This
will allow storage in high memory (>4G). Preprocessor macros (like
list_val_rel(TERM,BASE)) are used to make normal (fullword) emulator
almost completely unchanged while still reusing most of the code.
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* pan/otp_8332_halfword:
Teach testcase in driver_suite the new prototype for driver_async
wx: Correct usage of driver callbacks from wx thread
Adopt the new (R13B04) Nif functionality to the halfword codebase
Support monitoring and demonitoring from driver threads
Fix further test-suite problems
Correct the VM to work for more test suites
Teach {wordsize,internal|external} to system_info/1
Make tracing and distribution work
Turn on instruction packing in the loader and virtual machine
Add the BeamInstr data type for loaded BEAM code
Fix the BEAM dissambler for the half-word emulator
Store pointers to heap data in 32-bit words
Add a custom mmap wrapper to force heaps into the lower address range
Fit all heap data into the 32-bit address range
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Store Erlang terms in 32-bit entities on the heap, expanding the
pointers to 64-bit when needed. This works because all terms are stored
on addresses in the 32-bit address range (the 32 most significant bits
of pointers to term data are always 0).
Introduce a new datatype called UWord (along with its companion SWord),
which is an integer having the exact same size as the machine word
(a void *), but might be larger than Eterm/Uint.
Store code as machine words, as the instructions are pointers to
executable code which might reside outside the 32-bit address range.
Continuation pointers are stored on the 32-bit stack and hence must
point to addresses in the low range, which means that loaded beam code
much be placed in the low 32-bit address range (but, as said earlier,
the instructions themselves are full words).
No Erlang term data can be stored on C stacks (enforced by an
earlier commit).
This version gives a prompt, but test cases still fail (and dump core).
The loader (and emulator loop) has instruction packing disabled.
The main issues has been in rewriting loader and actual virtual
machine. Subsystems (like distribution) does not work yet.
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