llvm dev - Dec 2011 - [LLVMdev] Preemption with LLVM

Hey all,

I'm investigating LLVM for use for a future project of mine, and I was
wondering whether something is possible.  Specifically, I'm wondering
if there's a way to force preemption of a green thread-style task -
something like Erlang's "processes", where if a task executes for
too
long, it is preempted. [1]

My main goal here is to avoid having to write my own virtual machine -
the JVM is, as far as I can tell, not appropriate for when you want to
create hundreds of tasks, and I could not find any other VM that is
appropriate for this type of project (though suggestions are welcome).

Thank you for your time,
--Andrew D

[1] http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2001-April/003132.html

Hi Andrew,
> I'm investigating LLVM for use for a future project of mine, and I was
> wondering whether something is possible.  Specifically, I'm wondering
> if there's a way to force preemption of a green thread-style task -
> something like Erlang's "processes", where if a task executes
for too
> long, it is preempted. [1]
LLVM itself has no native support for this kind of thing, in fact it
relies on you calling system libraries for all threading support.
> My main goal here is to avoid having to write my own virtual machine -
> the JVM is, as far as I can tell, not appropriate for when you want to
> create hundreds of tasks, and I could not find any other VM that is
> appropriate for this type of project (though suggestions are welcome).
LLVM isn't a virtual machine in the JVM sense.

Ciao, Duncan.