cottrell@nbs-vms.ARPA (08/20/85)
/* What If Department: What if a different kind (color) of fork was defined to *not* duplicate either text or data, but only stack? This would eliminate (partially) the need for memory sharing as each process would share global vars, while keeping auto vars (including fn args) local to each process. This is not a new idea; UNIVAC (oops, Sperry) EXEC 8, does this with it's fork call, and calls the processes `activities'. What if UNIX (tm TPC) had this feature? What If? jim cottrell@nbs */ ------
chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (Chris Torek) (08/20/85)
A couple of us U of MD hackers were making random comments about Unix, lightweight processes, and so forth, and we decided that Unix needs some new system calls to round it out: fork() - make a copy of a process - modified: the new one would take an argument specifying whether the new process should share the old one's memory. knife() - cut apart shared memory spoon() - dip into another process's memory which I guess makes the virtual memory system a plate and the hardware a table.... :-) -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 4251) UUCP: seismo!umcp-cs!chris CSNet: chris@umcp-cs ARPA: chris@maryland (I can't believe I said that.)