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From: dave@sdeggo.UUCP (David L. Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Single tasking the wave of the future?
Message-ID: <151@sdeggo.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 6-Dec-87 20:21:28 EST
Article-I.D.: sdeggo.151
Posted: Sun Dec  6 20:21:28 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Dec-87 01:19:24 EST
References: <201@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> <388@sdcjove.CAM.UNISYS.COM> <988@edge.UUCP> <1227@sugar.UUCP>
Organization: Lazy Programmer's Society of San Diego
Lines: 34

In article <1227@sugar.UUCP>, peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
 >In article <147@sdeggo.UUCP>, dave@sdeggo.UUCP (David L. Smith) writes:
 >>I agree with John,  however the ideal towards which we are striving is multi-
 >>tasking operating systems and single-tasking processors.  Admit it, don't
 >>you hate having your processor multi-task?
 > 
 >Hello, no. Until you have something incredible like 64000 processors in your
 >box, you're going to find yourself running out of the suckers. If you have
 >a connection machine on your desk, great! If you've got a transputer, you 
 >lose.  What happens when you want to start up that 5th or 9th program and 
 >you've only got 4 or 8 CPUs?

Then one of your processors starts to multi-task.  Of course you never have
enough processors to handle everything, but it would be nice if you did.
It's an _ideal_.  

The question was "Don't you hate having your processor multi-task" and the
answers have been "No, because it has to."  If it didn't have to would you
want it to?  Timesharing is a necessary evil, and we use it because we have
finite resources.  The trend has been to increase these resources and at
the point where they become effectively infinite (if you have, say 256 
processors in a work station with a _very_ fast I/O system) the number of
times time-sharing would come into play would be very few.

The same arguments apply to virtual memory.  Do you like swapping, paging
and the rest of those fun things?  I don't, but I have to live with them
because I can't afford 4 gigabytes of RAM.  (Or 4 gig of disk for that 
matter).  Just because it's necessary doesn't mean you have to like it.

-- 
David L. Smith
{sdcsvax!man,ihnp4!jack!man, hp-sdd!crash, pyramid}!sdeggo!dave
man!sdeggo!dave@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu 
I don't need no steenkin' quote!