johnc@rtmvax.UUCP (John Connin ) (02/19/89)
The subject of large memory models in various forms and disguises
seems to be a subject that will not go away. Obviously, a need is being
expressed that needs to be satisfied, and (in my humble opinion) if not
satisfied will ultimately work to the detriment of Minix.
On the other hand I totally support the view expressed by many informed
people that the effort of supporting multiple memory models is just too
huge and painful to justify the benefit. Which leads me to ask the question
is there another (reasonable) way to achieve the objective?
In the hope of stimulating discussion of alternatives and ideally someone
into constructive action, consider the following:
1). Elle contains a library package which enables it (elle) to edit
files up to 2^32 bytes in size. I am under the impression that
this library (call SB for "String Block" or "String Buffer") is
very general purpose and may be freely distributed. Basicly this
package uses disk caching to achieve a huge data space.
Can this or some other library package provide Minix applications
with a 'official' method of dealing with large data objects --
just as the termcap provides a uniform 'supported' method
of dealing with terminals ??
2). Not long ago Don Libes posted a 'Common Memory System' library
to comp.sources.unix (1). Basicly this package uses a common
memory server that emulates shared or common memory at the user
level. The package appears to be small and elegant. The package
uses TCP-IP for inter-process communication/coordination, but it
appears that amoeba could be substituted with little effort..
What needs could multiple tasks cooperating via shared memory
solve ??
(1) v14i094-v14i098 titled "Shared memory emulation for 4.2BSD"
and dated on or about 17 May 88.
These are two areas that I have been meaning to investigate and have
not had the time to pursue. I am sure that there are others as well.
In any event I believe it would be highly beneficial if Minix could
adopted an 'official' library mechanism(s) for supporting applications
requiring an 'effective' code and/or data space greater than 64kbytes
-- while at the same time retaining the "small is beautiful" philosophy.
If you have any constructive ideas in this area please share it with
the net. Ideally if something useful unfolds perhaps AST will lead us
to a unified supported approach.
John Connin {peora!rtmvax!johnc}