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- Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
- Path: sparky!uunet!sun-barr!ames!sgi!rhyolite!vjs
- From: vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver)
- Subject: Re: lockd
- Message-ID: <nje1jic@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com>
- Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Mountain View, CA
- References: <1992Jul21.174721.26888@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> <14hpi3INNppo@seven-up.East.Sun.COM>
- Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 00:20:54 GMT
- Lines: 26
-
- In article <14hpi3INNppo@seven-up.East.Sun.COM>, geoff@tyger.Eng.Sun.COM (Geoff Arnold @ Sun BOS - R.H. coast near the top) writes:
- > ...
- > Why? Because back in 1986 it wasn't practical to create a multithreaded
- > lock manager.
-
-
- This is the first even remotely official statement I've heard that any
- of the various versions of lockd owe much to the simple locking demo
- program shown at USENIX or whatever in Feb (I think) 1986. By
- listening to what was said in meetings of B.Lyons' group at the time, I
- inferred that it was not intended to be a product. Are you referring
- to the same demo?
-
- It was not <<technically>> "impractical to create a multithreaded lock
- manager" in 1986. Perhaps no one had the time or inclination, but it
- was certainly technically feasible. "Multi-processing", "threads",
- and so on have not changed much since 1986. It is true that more
- companies are shipping multi-processor UNIX systems today, but that is
- not relevant. You don't need more than one processor for a
- multi-threaded program. You don't need klunky things like System V
- shared memory and semaphores, which were around in 1986 and might have
- been in SunOS--I don't remember. Lockd on SunOs of that vintage could
- probably have used vfork(), although that would have been somewhat kludgy.
-
-
- Vernon Schryver, vjs@sgi.com
-