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How Texans store their persistent objects.

 [1/2] from: chaz::innocent::com at: 19-Oct-2000 14:07


I may not yet understand the issues involved in memory management, but to this dilettante, any technique promises to solve such issues AND that calls itself by such a whimsical name - "pointer swizzling at page fault time" - [PS--PFT] - has got to be a good thing. That NAME - "pointer swizzling at page fault time" - it makes me want to be in a dark room, the only illumination coming from an ignored monitor behind me with a Windows blue screen of death, while before me a beautiful woman intently swirls a glass swizzle stick into a beverage - half alcoholic/half virtual - comprised of liquors and memory address locations. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the following - namely, a low-overhead method that provides huge address spaces, that can be implemented across many platforms and OS's, requiring only existing virtual memory features - but dreams are free. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ the original page http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/oops/papers.html Paul R. Wilson and Sheetal V. Kakkad. Pointer Swizzling at Page Fault Time: Efficiently and Compatibly Supporting Huge Address Spaces on Standard Hardware. In International Workshop on Object Orientation in Operating Systems, pages 364-377, Paris, France, September 1992. Pointer swizzling at page fault time is a novel address translation mechanism that exploits conventional address translation hardware. It can support huge address spaces efficiently without long hardware addresses; such large address spaces are attractive for persistent object stores, distributed shared memories, and shared address space operating systems. This swizzling scheme can be used to provide data compatibility across machines with different word sizes, and even to provide binary code compatibility across machines with different hardware address sizes. Pointers are translated ("swizzled") from a long format to a shorter hardware-supported format at page fault time. No extra hardware is required, and no continual software overhead is incurred by presence checks or indirection of pointers. This pagewise technique exploits temporal and spatial locality in much the same way as a normal virtual memory; this gives it many desirable performance characteristics, especially given the trend toward larger main memories. It is easy to implement using common compilers and operating systems. ftp://ftp.cs.utexas.edu/pub/garbage/swizz.ps ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Vivek Singhal, Sheetal Kakkad, and Paul Wilson. Texas: An Efficient, Portable Persistent Store. In Persistent Object Systems: Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Persistent Object Systems, pages 11-33, San Miniato, Italy, September 1992. Texas is a persistent storage system for C++, providing high performance while emphasizing simplicity, modularity and portability. A key component of the design is the use of pointer swizzling at page fault time, which exploits existing virtual memory features to implement large address spaces efficiently on stock hardware, with little or no change to existing compilers. Long pointers are used to implement an enormous address space, but are transparently converted to the hardware-supported pointer format when pages are loaded into virtual memory. Runtime type descriptors and slightly modified heap allocation routines support pagewise pointer swizzling by allowing objects and their pointer fields to be identified within pages. If compiler support for runtime type identification is not available, a simple preprocessor can be used to generate type descriptors. This address translation is largely independent of issues of data caching, sharing, and checkpointing; it employs operating systems' existing virtual memories for caching, and a simple and flexible logging system. Pagewise virtual memory protections are also used to detect writes for logging purposes, without requiring any changes to compiled code. This may degrade checkpointing performance for small transactions with poor locality of writes, but page diffing and sub-page logging promise to keep performance competitive with finer-grained checkpointing schemes. Texas presents a simple programming interface; an application creates persistent object by simply allocating them on the persistent heap. In addition, the implementation is relatively small, and is easy to incorporate into existing applications. ftp://ftp.cs.utexas.edu/pub/garbage/texaspstore.ps ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ the source code for Texas Persistent Store ftp://ftp.cs.utexas.edu/pub/garbage/texas/

 [2/2] from: bo:rebol at: 19-Oct-2000 14:42


On 19-Oct-2000/14:07:14-7:00, [chaz--innocent--com] wrote:
>That NAME - "pointer swizzling at page fault time" - it makes me want to be >in a dark room, the only illumination coming from an ignored monitor behind >me with a Windows blue screen of death, while before me a beautiful woman >intently swirls a glass swizzle stick into a beverage - half alcoholic/half >virtual - comprised of liquors and memory address locations.
How many of those drinks have you had already? ;-) Sorry...couldn't resist! -- Bohdan "Bo" Lechnowsky REBOL Adventure Guide REBOL Technologies 707-467-8000 (http://www.rebol.com) The Official Source for REBOL Books (http://www.REBOLpress.com)