tek@CS.UCLA.EDU (11/29/88)
On some UNIX systems, there is a system call to give "advice" on paging behavior. For example, in SunOS there is the vadvise system call. Has anyone tried any of these advice mechanisms with any Prolog? Does it increase performance? Under what circumstances does it have the most impact? &ted ARPAnet: tek@penzance.cs.ucla.edu UUCP: ...!ucbvax!ucla-cs!tek
gandalf@csli.STANFORD.EDU (Juergen Wagner) (11/29/88)
It depends. If your PROLOG is doing a GC, during that time a VA_ANOM or VA_SEQL might help improve performance. However, a simple mark and sweep strategy which traverses into widely spread out list structures would not support efficient memory management very much. The actual improvement of performance depends on your program (loops are better than heavy use of mutual recursion). I guess, as long as people are writing Prolog-style programs in Prolog (as opposed to procedural ones), you can always find a non-trivial application which makes life hard for your swapper. -- Juergen Wagner gandalf@csli.stanford.edu wagner@arisia.xerox.com