On Jul 30, 2013, at 00:41 , David Jeske <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 3:22 PM, Jonathan S. Shapiro <[email protected]> wrote:
> I find this very interesting. The [performance] objective you are setting 
> makes sense, but some of the particulars strike me as challenging - notably 
> the vector computation goals.
> I think you're taking my assertion just a bit too far. I simply mean 
> approaching the envelope of hardware performance should not require wholesale 
> jettisoning of the systems-runtime because of an achilles heel. I don't mean 
> that the language or runtime needs to directly support every hardware 
> capability itself.

While it wasn't your intention, do you think that asking for BitC/Rust-level 
support for something like OpenCL's or Cilk's vector datatypes is too much to 
expect?

http://www.khronos.org/registry/cl/specs/opencl-1.x-latest.pdf#page=129
http://software.intel.com/sites/products/documentation/doclib/stdxe/2013/composerxe/compiler/cpp-win/GUID-713DA73F-69CA-447E-A3C2-043C7EBC9420.htm

> AFAIK, the the stackless/first-class-continuations folks throwing stones at 
> the C-stack doesn't feel like an achilles heel. It hasn't been shown that 
> this is necessary to approach hardware performance potential. (it's more of a 
> code-size and clarity issue)

I agree in part but you're downplaying the combination of concurrent execution 
with sequential syntax - it's killer.  twisted's Deferred and other 
callback-based event models are so clunky and unfriendly to maintenance that 
they trip up beginners and experts alike.

-ipc

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