Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Each process does have its own garbage collector, but that's good 
>> because each process can use a different garbage collector, depending on 
>> the types of garbage it collects.
> 
>   But doesn't that make each program selfish? In other words, it only takes
> care of itself not running out of memory but completely disregards any other
> program running in the system at the same time?

Yes? And how is that different from, say, Windows or Linux? Maybe I'm 
not understanding your point.

I don't think I've ever written a program for Windows or Linux and 
worried about how much memory other processes in the system might be 
using at the moment. I think I did exactly one program like that on the 
Amiga. Not that I intentionally used more memory than I needed, mind.

What I was describing in that quote is this: The real-time programs use 
a real-time GC, the interactive programs use an interactive GC. It 
really doesn't have too much to do with how *much* memory they use.

Obviously if you have your memory management hardware turned off, you're 
going to have a hard time doing demand paging of stuff off the disk, but 
systems worked with that restriction for years and years. And they have 
mechanisms in place to let you turn that on for particular programs that 
want it, IIRC.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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