[comp.os.minix] M68000 and fork

david@doe.utoronto.ca (David Megginson) (01/12/91)

I have been reading this newsgroup for a couple of months, and I have
a question about M68000-based versions of Minix 1.5. How do they
manage concurrent forks, since all of, say, an Atari ST is a single
address space? If they swap all of the data, bss and allocated memory
in and out constantly, it must slow things down.

Thanks,

David

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/  David Megginson                      david@doe.utoronto.ca          /
/  Centre for Medieval Studies          meggin@vm.epas.utoronto.ca     /
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HBO043%DJUKFA11.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Christoph van Wuellen) (01/15/91)

Your assumption is right.
Constant swapping is performed, called SHADOWING in this group.
This slows things down for, e.g., a terminal emulator.
This is the reason a ST terminal emulator which forks and then exec's the
reader and the writer exist.

In most cases, a forked-off process does an exec sooner or later, this will
stop this swapping.
C.v.W.