Re: Alan Cox quote? (was: Re: accounting for threads)

J . A . Magallon
2001-06-24T21:38:09Z

On 20010622 Rob Landley wrote:
>
>I still consider the difference between threads and processes with shared
>resources (memory, fds, etc) to be largely semantic.
>

They should not be the same. Processes are processes, and threads were designed
for situations where processes are too heavy. Other thing is that in new
kernels (for example, Linux) processes are being optimized (ie, vm fast
'cloning' via copy-on-write) or expanded with new features (Linux' clone+
CLONE_VM). But they are different beasts.

This remembers on other question I read in this thread (I tried to answer then
but I had broke balsa...). Somebody posted some benchmarks of linux
fork()+exec() vs Solaris fork()+exec(). That is comparing apples and
oranges. The clean battle should be linux fork-exec vs vfork-exec in Solaris,
because for in linux is really a vfork in solaris.

--
J.A. Magallon # Let the source be with you...
mailto:jamagallon@able.es
Mandrake Linux release 8.1 (Cooker) for i586
Linux werewolf 2.4.5-ac17 #2 SMP Fri Jun 22 01:36:07 CEST 2001 i686