On 02/28/2006 01:09 AM, Yigong Liu wrote:
Yes, most design considerations of message passing systems still apply, such as avoiding data copying (Channel did it by message reference counting). More suggestions and comments are highly appreciated.
Hi, Yigong. I know almost nothing about distributed systems, but the above mention of reference counting reminded me that "weighted reference counting" is supposed to have some speed advantage in distributed systems. A reference is [lins91c] as shown on: http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/rej/gcbib/gcbibL.html IIRC, it saves time at the cost of memory. The extra memory is caused by the "weight" of of the reference count being stored in the smart pointer instead of a reference count in the object pointed-to. The weight is, I think, log2 of the normal reference count. Each time a copy is made, the weight is evenly divided between the from and to smart pointers. Only when an object is destroyed is communication with the pointee needed. Of course, there must be some provision for the weight dropping below 1 when too many copies are made. Would that be any use in your library?