Reference counting... (was) Re: [lug] in search of 3D api

[Archer Sully]

"Scott A. Herod" wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I had forgotten inventor.  Good call.  ( And I also
> think that a good implementation of reference counting is
> useful. :-)
> 

I've yet to see a good one.  Every last one of them has 
arcane rules as to when a user must increment or decrement
a ref.  Which, IMHO, just trades one set of subtle bugs for
another.  Give me REAL garbage collection, or give me malloc!

> 
> In August, I saw SGI's current version and they have made significant
> improvements.  They were running the town demo at 60 hz on one of their
> 550s ( or were they still 540s at the time ).  I am pretty sure that
> they made kernel mods to get realtime off the system but don't know
> if that work is available.
> 

Its good to see that there is still some good work being done back
there.  SGI was a great company at one time.

IRIX has all sort of entertaining stuff in the kernel (and in
SGI's processor boards) to facilitate real-time work.  I have
doubts that any generic PC hardware could duplicate what's done
in IRIX.

-- archer