new toy benchmark

Soren Renner — 2000-09-18 15:26:02

toy changes:

* fundamental data structure is now a doubly linked box chain

* tail recursion eliminated

* program = stack = continuation

* it is now trivial to start and stop threads. a thread is a list which remembers where it is executing.

* multithreaded OS in toy now possible

* speed: one would expect toy to be slower now and it is. The
standard benchmark [ 1 [ 1 plus ] 10000000 times] now takes
almost 16 seconds -- before it was around 4.5 seconds. toy is now
about 3.5 times slower and twice as slow as official Joy.

to be done:

* a full set of combinators and other ops

* ops for data types besides lists and integers ie chars, strings, etc.

* toyOs demo.

toy runs on Oberon. It doesn't need any modules that aren't included on the installation disk image oberon0.dsk. This is the image that one writes to a floppy and then installs Native Oberon from. It should be possible to include the toyOs demo on a modified image that could then be booted to install itself on a partition. (x86 box with free partition needed.) But I don't know how to create a customized installer, find out from someone at ETHZ.

It is to be hoped that, this accomplished, such a bootable image would meet with not only a courteous but a frankly warm reception from the estimable recipients of this mailing list.

sr