[webkit-dev] [Block Pointer] Deterministic Region Based Memory Manager

[Filip Pizlo]

> On Mar 4, 2016, at 9:33 PM, Phil Bouchard <philippeb8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 03/05/2016 12:07 AM, Ryosuke Niwa wrote:
>> Hi Phil,
>> 
>> You made a similar post in December 2014:
>> https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/2014-December/027113.html
>> 
>> Are you suggesting you have done or ready to do the following?
> 
> I just completed the implementation of block_ptr<> but I am ready to run benchmarks on my laptop once the code is integrated locally on my computer.
> 
> I work for a smart TV company which uses WebKit so I can ask assistance from their part if I need to but I need to know the interests from the Open Source community first.

If you're right then you've resolved CS problems dating back to the 50's. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You haven't provided any evidence. 

> 
>>> Let’s be clear, though: we’re unlikely to accept a patch in which all of our JS object references are replaced by uses of your block_ptr, unless that patch is a significant speed-up on web benchmarks, there aren’t any slow-downs, and you can prove that all of the JSC GC’s lifetime semantics are preserved (including tricky things like the relationship between Executable objects, Structure objects, and CodeBlocks).
>> 
>> Otherwise, I don't think we would be adopting your memory management
>> library anytime soon.   I don't think we're interested in
>> experimenting with your library on behalf of you either given
>> implementing a concurrent GC on top of our existing GC would be much
>> lower risk and will address some of the issues you have pointed out in
>> the thread.
> 
> It depends on the complexity of swapping the garbage collector with the block_ptr<> in WebKit.  If that is easy I can do it myself on my laptop.  If not then perhaps I can download the garbage collector and compare it with block_ptr<> but objectively; including the collection cycle.

Replacing our GC with anything else is going to be incredibly difficult. 

We aren't going to be compelled by a comparison of our GC to something else if it isn't in the context of web workloads. 

> 
> I wasn't confident in 2014 because my code wasn't solid but now I am.  I just need some minimal guidance.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> -Phil
> 
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