Comments on: Thoughts on MagLev - VM’s for everybody!

By: Sadek Drobi’s Blog » More languages on top of Erlang virtual machine

Sadek Drobi’s Blog » More languages on top of Erlang virtual machine — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:50:13 +0000

[...] Debasish Ghosh, who wrote several posts about Erlang virtual machine, seems to believe momentum is growing for increasing number of languages variants being implemented on top of BEAM. In his post „Erlang VM : now hosting multiple languages”, he also mentions Reia and LFE whereas one comentator refers to some Haskel based initiatives. Debasish suggests that this growth of Erlang ecosystem is part of a more general trend observed by Ted Leung who argues that „we are going to see not only flourishing new virtual machines, but also lots of languages atop exist…“. [...]

By: Ted Leung

Ted Leung — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:32:42 +0000

I knew I should have left the hardware sentences in that post… Here’s what I mean when I say multicore.

MacPro: 8 cores in the box. Sun x4150: 4-8 cores in the box. Sun T5120 64 hardware threads in the box, T5240 128 hardware threads. All shipping today.

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:21:55 +0000

No, I think it’s very clear that software developers can largely ignore dual core systems, because typical background workloads on most machines can utilize about half of the second CPU.

It’s not until you get to 4-core machines that you start to do so at your own peril, and those are just now out there. I would argue that it’s not really until around 6- to 8-cores that things really get uncomfortable for those who refuse to keep up.

By: Martijn Faassen

Martijn Faassen — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:09:25 +0000

In this case, Python is in a good starting position with PyPy, which has as one of the primary aims the ability to generate differently configured Python interpreters, targetting multiple VM backends, etc.

Using PyPy it should be easier to make Python run properly on something like MagLev than it would be to really properly port Ruby.

Of course Python doesn’t really need an object database, it already has several, such as the ZODB.

By: Ted Leung

Ted Leung — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:08:29 +0000

Believe it or not, I think we are just getting started.

By: Gustavo Niemeyer

Gustavo Niemeyer — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:56:36 +0000

“I believe that over the next few years we will see a flourishing of virtual machines, as well as languages atop existing virtual machines.”

In the next few years? That’s what we have been looking at for a while.