01659@AECLCR.BITNET (Greg Csullog) (08/16/89)
I wish that some of the people who read and reply to net postings would actually take the time to understand what they have read. As an example, one reply about my original posting about MT on the ST went on-and-on about the move towards MT in the industry; hey!, I was NOT against MT, just puzzled why anyone would want it on a system like an 68000 at 8 MHz. In addition, so many postings came back giving examples of MT when they were just glorified task switching examples. MT to me means doing several CPU intensive jobs at the same time. It's not the ability to format a disk while you type in your word processor. It's not switching out of some game to do some spreadsheet work. It's not swapping data between painting programs. Those are all task switching examples. MT is controlling some lab equipment while at the same time several users log on and do word processing and someone else is generating a database report. Look, I can format floppies from within all my ST applications, I can run a word processor, a spreadsheet and a painting program at the same time and switch between them. I can ask REVOLVER to 'rollout' a memory partition to disk. BUT, when I want to crank out dbMAN reports from my databases (one is almost 4 megabytes), I don't want to slow down my 68000 by using another application at all. I want the dbMAN stuff out asap. I reitierate, I am not anti-multitasking and I this is not a case of sour grapes (that's for you Amiga guys). I'll just wait until I can afford a machine that's got the guts to do real multitasking. Anybody understand the following? NO IFBMS NO AMIFGAS NO MFACS NO WFAY
antony@lbl-csam.arpa (Antony A. Courtney) (08/16/89)
In article <8908160401.AA01009@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> 01659@AECLCR.BITNET (Greg Csullog) writes: >I wish that some of the people who read and reply to net postings would >actually take the time to understand what they have read. As an example, >one reply about my original posting about MT on the ST went on-and-on >about the move towards MT in the industry; hey!, I was NOT against MT, just >puzzled why anyone would want it on a system like an 68000 at 8 MHz. Right. These people responded because it is important to note that with a well written OS, things don't have to slow down, and generally don't. Multitasking adds functionality and versatility to any system. And one of the fundamental ideas behind most multitasking OSs is that things do not stop, they just slow down. Slowing down a little always beats stopping or exiting an application. >In addition, so many postings came back giving examples of MT when they were >just glorified task switching examples. > >MT to me means doing several CPU intensive jobs at the same time. It's not >the ability to format a disk while you type in your word processor. It's >not switching out of some game to do some spreadsheet work. It's not >swapping data between painting programs. Those are all task switching examples. Oh, Gee--So you define multitasking differently from everyone else in the world and then say you don't think multitasking is a good idea?! :) The conventional definition of multitasking as I have learned it is transparent control by the OS over multiple execution streams. Yes, this does involve context switching, but the application never knows about the context switch and is in fact not aware that it ever stops executing. Each process thinks it has the whole of the system's resources available to it. And multitasking implies a very fine granularity between context switches, such that if two processes are competing for CPU time, it is extremely difficult to tell that they are not both running concurrently. > [ Example about not wanting to multitask while generating dbMan reports > because it would slow them down..] As everyone else said: "Not if the other processes sleep pending some user action like they are SUPPOSED to...." > >I reitierate, I am not anti-multitasking and I this is not a case of sour >grapes (that's for you Amiga guys). I'll just wait until I can afford a >machine that's got the guts to do real multitasking. > And your 68000 _HAS_ the guts to do multitasking. And in some ways better than a lot of other "Industrial" machines. I'd be willing to bet that your 8 Mhz. 68000 can do a context switch faster than my Sun 4/280! :) {For those technical-minded types who think I am exaggerating: the SpArc is a RISC chip, meaning it has something well upwards of 200 32 bit registers. The 68000 has 14 32 bit registers. Which do you think pushes them to the stack faster? (And being register-rich is one of the arguments people make for RISC architecture! Gimme a good hardware based LRU register buffering scheme, and then maybe we'll talk...:) } >Anybody understand the following? > >NO IFBMS NO AMIFGAS NO MFACS NO WFAY Multitasking is the best thfing since sliced bread! :) Antony ******************************************************************************* Antony A. Courtney antony@lbl.gov Advanced Development Group ucbvax!lbl-csam.arpa!antony Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory AACourtney@lbl.gov
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (08/16/89)
in article <8908160401.AA01009@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, 01659@AECLCR.BITNET (Greg Csullog) says: > Look, I can format floppies from within all my ST applications, But you have to either have the Format command available as a desk accessory (don't know if it's possible?), or each individual program must worry about including a disk format option. Certainly if that's important to the market, most will, but it's still something a program's author shouldn't have to worry about -- debugging the real application should occupy all their time. Plus, when I format a floppy, I can click back to my WordProcessor or Terminal or whatever else I have running, while the format takes place. > I can run a word processor, a spreadsheet and a painting program at the same > time and switch between them. But you can't have the word processor ask the data base to find you client files, extract some data, pass it to the spreadsheet, generate a color image, then pass that to the paint program for conversion to black and while, before being inserted into your word processor. You need several programs active for that kind of interaction. > BUT, when I want to crank out dbMAN reports from my databases (one is > almost 4 megabytes), I don't want to slow down my 68000 by using another > application at all. I want the dbMAN stuff out asap. DataBase stuff is often disk intensive. If my DB program is thumbing through 100 megs of database to prepare a report, I'll likely have lots of CPU time left for other stuff. -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy Be careful what you wish for -- you just might get it