[fpc-pascal] Re: Multi-threaded project with few locks (no Thread.waitfor). Memory consumption keeps increasing on Ubuntu 10.10 x64

[Andrew Brunner]

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Michael Van Canneyt
<michael at freepascal.org> wrote:

> It would allow me to write programs that are multithreaded and don't use
> external libs.

Right.  Every interface between the kernel space and user space add at
least one degree of inefficiency.  So every FPC program would be
carrying at least one extra point of interface into the kernel.  And
when you scale these systems out they are clearly noticeable.

> And yes, they do exist. Not GUI, but server apps. Now, the only dependency
> is often libc for the threads.

GUI apps would for realtime reporting and analysis.  GUI apps using
graphical representations would most likely use OpenGL or DirectX to
represent that much data in a way that is intelligible.  Otherwise the
calculations would need to be pushed off to another process or
hardware device using IPC or something internal.

> There is a clear target: FPC programs without external libs, capable of
> multi-threading and thread synchronization, which basically means:
> - Ability to create threads.
> - Ability to use mutexes across threads.
> - Ability to use semaphores.

Exactly +3.  Desktop computing and dashboards are big.  Getting people
to use Lazarus and FPC should be easy with some SEO with links to
sample "engines".

> It's not because you don't see the value, that other people don't. So at
> least, please don't stop them from trying to go somewhere, even if you don't
> want to go there.

Exactly.  Important point.  It's real easy to get discouraged.
Especially when most of this work is contributed.