Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Why Events Are A Bad Idea (for high-concurrency servers) (usenix.org)
27 points by dblock on Aug 22, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments



I thought it was strange that in the '“Problems” with Threads' section they didn't even mention testability - which is the number 1 problem we have in trying to create high-reliability systems with threads.

I work in embedded systems which run unattended for months at a time so they have to be reliable. The interactions between threads can create all sorts of unexpected race conditions which are very hard to predict. And if you can't assure repeatable behavior you can't properly test a system. On the basis of testability alone we avoid threads.


This paper uses cooperatively scheduled threads (i.e. no preemption or concurrent execution of threads), which means you don't have to deal with synchronization.


Worth pointing out that one of the authors, Eric Brewer, is now part of the effort to design Google's next generation infrastructure:

http://twitter.com/#!/eric_brewer/status/68051541063503872


And while we're at it - he is much better known for the CAP theorem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem


We just had this yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2907415


sorry, i was hoping NH would find a dup if it were already there! :(





Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: